He came at sunrise, barefoot, hair tangled with seeds.
The boy I'd healed — the one who'd eaten the poisoned berries — stood at the gate, not speaking, just looking.
And then I saw it.
On the back of his left hand — a thin, green shoot, no longer than a fingernail, curled like a fiddlehead fern.
It wasn't grafted.
It wasn't illusion.
It grew.
And it pulsed — faint, but in rhythm with the network.
Maren saw it first.
She didn't flinch.
Didn't gasp.
Just stepped forward, knelt, and pressed her thumb to the soil near his foot.
Then, softly:
"It's begun."
"What?" I asked.
"The spreading," she said.
"Not just roots.
Not just vines.
Voices."
She looked at the boy.
"Did you feel it come?"
He nodded, slow.
"Last night.
Like… a pull.
In my blood.
I didn't fight it."
Thistle swayed, uncharacteristically still.
"He's not infected," he said.
"He's invited."
I knelt beside the boy.
"Does it hurt?"
"No," he said.
"It's… warm.
Like sunlight under skin."
He looked at me.
"Is it bad?"
I didn't answer right away.
Because I knew what this meant.
The Green Heart wasn't just reclaiming the wild.
It wasn't just using me.
It was seeding itself into the human world — not through conquest, but through consent.
And this boy — small, scarred, poisoned and saved — had said yes without knowing.
I touched his wrist.
And listened.
Not to his heartbeat.
To the current beneath it.
Faint.
New.
But connected.
To the nursery.
To the sewers.
To the buried tree.
To me.
He wasn't a vessel yet.
But he was open.
And that was enough.
"It's not bad," I said.
"But it's not safe, either.
The world will fear this.
They'll call it corruption.
Infection.
A disease."_
"But it's not?"
"No," I said.
"It's evolution.
But evolution has always been dangerous to those who want to stay the same."
He looked at the shoot.
Then gently touched it.
A drop of clear sap formed at the tip.
Fell to the soil.
And where it landed — a clover sprouted, fast, impossibly green.
"He doesn't just carry it," the oak rumbled.
"He feeds it."
By noon, others came.
Not many.
Just three.
A woman with cracked hands from digging through rubble — a thin vine had begun to curl around her wrist, not breaking skin, but emerging from it.
She said it started after she saved a sapling from a collapsing wall.
A man who'd been blind since birth — he said he now "saw" in roots and scent, and his fingertips had darkened, like bark.
And a girl, no older than twelve, who whispered:
"The dandelions sing to me.
I can't stop hearing them."
They didn't ask for help.
They asked:
"Are we like you?"
I looked at them.
At the boy.
At the green on their skin.
And I knew —
this was no longer just my path.
It was a return.
"You're not like me," I said.
"You're like the land.
And if you don't run —
it will grow through you.
Not to hurt.
To remember."_
Maren stepped forward.
"Then they'll need guidance," she said.
"Or they'll be torn apart."
"By Hollow?"
"By everyone," she said.
"Fear doesn't care which side holds the knife."
I looked at the nursery.
The walls were low.
The gate, fragile.
And now, the first of the chosen stood before it.
Not soldiers.
Not warriors.
But the willing.
And I realized —
this was no longer a garden.
It was a sanctuary.
And I was no longer just the Voice.
I was the first of a kind.
That night, I dreamed of forests.
Not as they were.
Not as they could be.
But as they remembered.
Vast.
Connected.
Alive with voices — human, plant, root, wind — all speaking in the same breath.
And in the center of it all —
a tree with many trunks.
Some of wood.
Some of flesh.
All joined at the root.
And a voice, not from the Green Heart, but from beyond it:
"You were never meant to save the world.
You were meant to become it."
I woke with tears on my cheeks.
And on my palm —
a new mark.
Branching.
Spreading.
Like a map.
Like a call.
And far away, in the dark,
the black seed trembled.
Not in fear.
In recognition.