The tunnel entrance was hidden beneath a collapsed overpass, half-buried in rubble and kudzu.
No sign.
No marker.
But the network knew.
The root-mark on my arm pulsed steadily, not in warning — in recognition.
Like a child returning to a home it never knew.
Maren came with me.
Not to guide.
To witness.
"The last Voice before me," she said, voice low, "was not killed.
She was taken.
Hollow didn't burn her.
He opened her.
To study how the Green Heart held on."_
"And the Heart let it happen?"
She didn't answer.
Because we both knew —
the Green Heart does not save.
It tests.
And sometimes, the test is survival.
Sometimes, it is sacrifice.
We descended.
Not by ladder.
By root.
A thick vine, black-green and warm to the touch, coiled down the shaft like a living stair.
It didn't move for anyone else.
Only for me.
The deeper we went, the heavier the air became — not with heat, but with memory.
Not my own.
Hers.
Fragments brushed my mind:
A hand pressing into soil.A child's laugh in a sunlit grove.A knife at her throat.A whisper: "Don't let it take the core."
Then silence.
The tunnel opened into a chamber — not man-made, not natural.
Carved.
As if something had grown inward.
And in the center —
a tree.
But not alive.
Its trunk was split down the middle, fused with rusted metal and glass tubes.
Roots, blackened and lifeless, stretched into the floor, connected to a network of wires that pulsed with a slow, artificial rhythm.
And wrapped around the base —
a body.
Or what was left of one.
Clothes long rotted.
Skin fused with bark.
Hair, gray and brittle, woven into the roots like moss.
But the face —
still recognizable.
A woman.
Eyes open, unseeing.
Mouth slightly parted, as if caught mid-word.
Maren fell to her knees.
"Elira," she whispered.
"You held longer than any of us."_
I didn't move.
Because the network was screaming — not in sound, but in grief.
This was not just the last Voice.
This was the first failure.
Not of will.
Not of strength.
Of mercy.
"She tried to save them," the oak whispered in my mind.
"The others who were taken.
She reached too far.
And the Heart could not sustain her."
I stepped forward.
The root-mark on my arm flared — not pain, but kinship.
And then, without touching her, I heard.
Not her voice.
But her last act.
A memory, not in words, but in pulse:
She had not fought.
She had opened.
Let the roots take her, not to escape, but to hide the core — the seed of the Green Heart — inside her own body, where Hollow's machines couldn't detect it.
She had become a vessel, not by choice, but by necessity.
And when they cut her open, they found only dead wood.
The core was gone.
But so was she.
And now, the machine around her — the wires, the humming tubes, the artificial roots — was not just studying her.
It was reconstructing her.
Trying to replicate the bond.
To wear the Voice like a suit.
"He doesn't want to destroy the Heart," Maren said, rising.
"He wants to replace it.
To become the new vessel.
Not through growth.
Through infection."_
I looked at Elira's face.
Still peaceful.
Still watching.
And then —
a single tear, not from her eye, but from the bark beside it.
Like the tree still mourned.
I knelt.
Not to weep.
Not to rage.
To remember.
I placed my hand on the fused root beside her.
And sent one truth into the network:
"She was not unmade.
She was the first to give everything.
And we are still here
because she refused to let go."
The chamber trembled.
Not with quake.
With response.
From the nursery, a pulse.
From the boy with the leaf, a breath.
From the buried tree, a tap.
And deep in the wires, where the machine tried to mimic life —
the rhythm faltered.
Just once.
Just a stutter.
But it was enough.
Because the machine could copy the structure.
It could replicate the signal.
But it could not copy grief.
It could not fake memory.
It could not forge a bond that was born not of power —
but of love.
Maren placed a single sprig of mint at the base of the tree.
"Let her rest," she said.
"The Heart has a new Voice.
And this time —
we won't let her be unmade alone."_
We left.
But not before I saw it —
in the corner of the chamber, where no wire reached,
a single shoot, pale and fragile, pushing through the concrete.
Not from the machine.
Not from the body.
From the soil.
And as we ascended, the root-stair trembled —
not in fear.
In promise.