I woke to the taste of soil.
Not on my lips.
Not in my mouth.
In my blood.
I lay still, eyes closed, listening.
The house was quiet.
The garden, for once, silent.
No whisper from Thistle.
No rustle from the mint.
Even the oak held its breath.
And beneath my skin —
a pulse.
Not my heartbeat.
Something else.
Slow.
Deep.
Like sap rising.
I opened my eyes.
Moonlight cut through the window, stripe across the floor.
I sat up.
Pushed back the sleeve of my nightshirt.
And saw it.
Just above the wrist — a thin, dark line, branching slightly, like a root etched into flesh.
Not raised.
Not scabbed.
But part of me.
I touched it.
Cold.
Not like death.
Like depth.
And when I pressed, a faint green glow pulsed beneath the skin — once, soft, then gone.
"You've been chosen," said the oak, voice low in my mind.
"Not just to speak.
To become."
I didn't answer.
Because I felt it now — not just in my arm, but in my bones, my lungs, the space behind my eyes.
A network, not of nerves, but of something older.
I stood.
Walked to the mirror.
The mark was still there.
And now, I saw — a second line, just below the collarbone, thin as a hair, curling toward my heart.
Not painful.
Not wrong.
But inevitable.
Like a seed that had been planted long before I was born.
I went outside.
The garden didn't react.
No vines rose.
No leaves turned.
They already knew.
I knelt by the sapling — the one born from the sunken seed — and pressed my palm to its trunk.
And connected.
Not through will.
Not through skill.
Through shared blood.
Images flooded in:
A woman, centuries ago, standing in a grove, her arms black with veins, her hair woven with ivy.Men with torches.A knife.Her last breath: not scream, but song — and the earth rising to claim her.
Then another:
A man, face half-rotted, roots bursting from his chest, walking into a burning field.He didn't scream.He grew.
Then another.
And another.
The Voices before me.
Not just teachers.
Not just guardians.
Transformed.
And the final truth came, not in words, but in memory:
The Green Heart does not choose a human to wield power.
It chooses a vessel.
And when the time comes,
the vessel does not die.
It unfolds.
I pulled back.
My breath came fast.
Not fear.
Not panic.
But recognition.
This was not corruption.
This was evolution.
And I had already begun.
I didn't sleep.
Instead, I walked the garden, barefoot, feeling the soil through my soles, the roots beneath like distant cousins.
Thistle swayed, uncharacteristically quiet.
"You're not afraid," he said.
"I am," I said.
"But not of this."
"Then what?"
"Of refusing it."
"Of running.
Of being the one who almost listened.
Who almost stood."_
He didn't joke.
"The last one who fled became a weed," he said.
"Small. Forgotten.
The land does not forgive abandonment."
I looked at my arm.
The root-mark pulsed again — faint, but steady.
And then, without thinking, I pressed my hand to the earth.
And asked:
"Will it hurt?"
The answer didn't come from the plants.
Not from the oak.
Not from the network.
It came from within.
A whisper, soft as leaf-fall:
"Only if you resist."
I sat there until dawn.
When Maren found me, she didn't speak.
She looked at my arm.
Nodded once.
Then said only:
"The first root is the hardest.
After that, the body remembers its true shape."
She handed me a cup of tea — bitter, green, steaming.
"Drink.
It will help you listen."
"What if I don't want to?"
She smiled — thin, knowing.
"You already do."
I drank.
And as the warmth spread through me, I felt it —
not just the network,
not just the garden,
but the city,
the sewers,
the buried tree,
the black seed still trembling in its soil.
All of them —
alive.
connected.
waiting.
And the root beneath my skin —
it didn't feel like invasion.
It felt like homecoming.