It started with silence.
Not the good kind.
Not the deep, rooted quiet of the network.
This was different — a hole in the sound of the garden.
The mint stopped rustling.
The lavender sealed its buds.
Even Thistle went still.
"It's waking," he said, low.
"And it's not happy."
I looked at the black seed.
Kael had brought it four nights ago.
I'd buried it beside the sapling, near the drain where the roots slipped underground.
At first, nothing.
Then, last night — a crack in the resin.
Now, the soil around it was cold.
Not frozen.
Not dead.
But wrong — like the earth had forgotten how to breathe.
I knelt.
No glow.
No pulse.
Just a stillness that pulled.
Then —
a vibration.
Not through air.
Through bone.
Low.
Rhythmic.
Like a heartbeat buried too deep.
But it wasn't a heartbeat.
It was a scream.
Too low for human ears.
But the plants heard it.
The network heard it.
I heard it — not in my skull, but in the space behind my ribs.
It wasn't sound.
It was frequency.
A cry encoded in vibration.
And the worst part?
It was familiar.
I pressed my palm to the soil.
And listened.
The network recoiled — not in fear, but in recognition.
Images came:
A forest, vast and black, burning.Men in gray coats, not Hollow's, but older — scientists, priests, something in between.A tree, massive, its trunk split down the center.And from it — seeds, ripped out, screaming as they were torn from root and soul.
One was placed in a steel case.
Labeled:
Specimen #7 — Contained. Non-Viable.
But it wasn't dead.
It was trapped.
And now, after decades, it was answering.
Not to me.
To the sapling — the one born from the sunken seed.
Its sibling.
"It's not corrupted," Thistle whispered.
"It's captive."
I looked at the crack.
A thin, dark root had emerged — not growing outward, but curling inward, like a hand clutching itself.
It wasn't trying to escape.
It was afraid.
And then, clear in my mind — not voice, but emotion, raw and desperate:
"Don't let them take me again."
I didn't move.
But the sapling did.
One of its branches lowered — slow, careful — and brushed the cracked resin.
A pulse.
Faint.
But there.
Connection.
The screaming stopped.
Just for a moment.
Then, softer, weaker:
"You… remember?"
I didn't answer with words.
I placed both hands on the soil.
And sent one truth, deep into the network:
"You're not alone."
The seed trembled.
And for the first time, the soil around it warmed.
But far away —
in the ruins where Hollow stood over a blackened field —
he turned.
And smiled.
Because he felt it too.
The first whisper of the lost.
The first crack in the silence.
And he knew —
the buried were waking.