It started in my teeth.
A vibration.
Not sound.
Not thought.
But frequency, deep in the bone, like roots tapping through stone.
I woke gasping.
Not from a dream.
From a memory I'd never lived.
The room was dark.
The garden silent.
But beneath my skin — the root-mark pulsed, not in rhythm with my heart, but with something older.
I pressed my palm to the floor.
And the vision came.
Not in images.
In maps.
A network of green, thin and fragile, threading through the city —
a sapling in an abandoned greenhouse.
A tangle of ivy in a subway tunnel.
A single dandelion growing through a crack in a hospital wall.
All alive.
All connected.
All listening.
And at the center —
a pulse.
Not in the nursery.
Not in the oak.
Deeper.
Older.
Beneath the ruins of the old botanical gardens, where the first greenhouse had been built a century ago —
where the land had been studied, contained, controlled —
something waited.
Not buried.
Not sleeping.
Calling.
The Green Heart.
And it wasn't speaking to the network.
It was speaking to me —
through the root in my blood,
through the mark on my arm,
through the slow, quiet transformation of my body into something other.
Come.
Not in words.
In pull.
Like gravity.
Like tide.
I stood.
Maren was already at the door.
She didn't speak.
Just nodded.
"You felt it."
"It's not a request," I said.
"It's a summons."
"It always is," she said.
"The Heart doesn't ask.
It remembers."
She handed me a pouch — dried mint, crushed oak bark, a single seed from the buried tree.
"Take this.
Not for power.
For recognition.
The Heart will test you.
Not your strength.
Your worth."_
"And if I fail?"
"Then the path ends," she said.
"And the world returns to silence."
A pause.
"But you won't fail.
Because you're not going for yourself.
You're going for the child who grew leaves.
For the woman with the vine on her wrist.
For every one who will come after."_
I didn't answer.
Because I already knew.
This wasn't a journey.
It was a return.
I left at dawn.
No weapon.
No armor.
Just my hands, the root-mark now glowing faintly beneath my sleeve, and the quiet hum in my bones.
The city was still.
The silence from Hollow's ripple had left scars — patches of dead grass, trees with sealed bark, vines that refused to move.
But the network was healing.
Where the boy had walked, clover grew.
Where the blind man had touched a wall, moss spread.
Life was remembering.
And I was its echo.
The botanical gardens were a ruin — glass shattered, steel frames twisted, ivy reclaiming the wreckage.
No guards.
No signs.
Just stillness.
I stepped through the broken arch.
And the air changed.
Not colder.
Not darker.
Thicker.
Like walking into water.
And then —
the pull became a voice.
Not in my ears.
In my blood.
You are late.
I didn't flinch.
"I'm here."
Are you?
The voice was not kind.
Not cruel.
It was ancient, like stone turning to soil.
You carry the mark.
But do you carry the will?
The last who came fled.
The one before that, ruled.
Both were unmade.
What are you?
I didn't answer with pride.
Not with fear.
With truth.
"I'm the one who listened first.
Not because I was strong.
Because I had nothing else.
I don't want to rule.
I don't want to hide.
I just want the world to remember that it's alive."*
Silence.
Then —
a crack in the earth.
Not violent.
Invitation.
A single root, black-green and veined with gold, rose from the split.
It didn't attack.
Didn't coil.
It offered.
I knelt.
And took it.
The moment my skin touched it —
the vision came.
Not of the past.
Of the future.
A city, not destroyed, not reclaimed —
rewoven.
Vines in the streets.
Trees in the towers.
Children with leaves in their hair, laughing as roots carried water to the dry zones.
Men and women, marked like me, standing at the edges, not commanding, but balancing.
And at the center —
a tree with many trunks.
Some of wood.
Some of flesh.
All one.
And the voice, softer now:
Then rise.
The root pulsed.
And the mark on my arm flared — not pain, but awakening.
I stood.
And the ruins trembled.
Not with quake.
With response.
From the sewers, a tap.
From the nursery, a surge.
From the boy's hand, the shoot unfurled —
one leaf.
Green.
Perfect.
The Green Heart had not spoken in words.
But it had answered.
And now —
the real work began.