She came at dawn, barefoot, her clothes torn, her arms wrapped in strips of moss.
Not running.
Not begging.
Walking.
And the wind with her.
Not natural.
It moved around her, not through — a low, constant hum, like breath through broken glass.
The garden recoiled.
Thistle swayed, voice tight:
"She carries the silence.
Not the kind that kills.
The kind that listens."
I stepped forward.
She didn't look at me.
Looked past, toward the place where the oak had stood.
"It's gone," she said.
"The anchor."
"Yes."
"Then you're truly alone."_
She didn't wait for invitation.
Sat on the cracked step, pulled a strip of moss from her arm, pressed it into the soil.
It didn't die.
It spread.
"My name is Serra," she said.
"I was Hollow's Voice before you were born."_
I didn't flinch.
"You served him."
"No," she said.
"I served the idea.
That the world was dying.
That the wild had become a disease.
That if we didn't cut it out, nothing would survive."_
"And now?"
She lifted her hand.
On her palm — a thin, black vein, pulsing like a root.
Not growing.
Suppressed.
"Now I know the truth.
He doesn't want to save the world.
He wants to replace it.
Not with order.
With emptiness."_
She looked at me.
"You think he burns because he hates life.
He doesn't.
He burns because he loved it too much.
Once.
Before the System.
Before the chaos.
He watched his daughter die under a collapsing tree, crushed not by malice, but by wild, uncontrolled growth.
Vines through the roof.
Roots through the floor.
Nature didn't hate her.
It didn't care."_
Silence.
Then:
"So he decided — if life won't obey, it must be remade.
Controlled.
Purified.
Not through cruelty.
Through mercy."_
I didn't speak.
Because I understood.
Hollow was not a monster.
He was a grief-stricken man who had decided the world was too wild to love.
And that made him more dangerous than any tyrant.
"Why come here?" I asked.
"If you know all this."
"Because he's not building a machine anymore," she said.
"He's building a body.
From fossilized roots, from the bones of the first Voices, from the core of the dead zones.
He's not trying to wear the Green Heart.
He's trying to become it.
To be the last Voice — not chosen by the land, but by his own will."_
"And if he succeeds?"
"Then the wild won't be destroyed," she said.
"It will be commanded.
Every vine, every root, every chosen one — including you — will answer to him.
Not because they want to.
Because the Heart will be his."_
Thistle stirred.
"She's not lying," he said.
"The wind carries her truth.
Even the silence knows it."
I looked at Serra.
"You could have run."
"I did," she said.
"For months.
But the moss grew anyway.
The roots followed.
The land doesn't abandon its own — even the broken ones."_
She pressed both hands into the soil.
"I'm not asking for shelter.
I'm asking for purpose.
If you're going to stop him, you need to know:
You can't fight grief with fire.
You can't answer control with more control.
You have to show him what he's forgotten."_
"What's that?"
"That the wild doesn't need to obey to be loved.
That balance isn't order.
That life is worth the risk."_
She stood.
"He's not in the tunnels anymore.
He's in the old botanical gardens.
Where it all began.
Where the first greenhouse stood.
He's turning it into a tomb.
And a cradle."_
"For what?"
"For the new world," she said.
"The one with no surprises.
No loss.
No love."_
She turned to leave.
"I'll go back."
"Why?"
"Because someone has to remember what he was before the fire," she said.
"And someone has to be there when he finally sees you — not with an army, not with fire, but with a child who grew leaves… and still laughs."_
She walked into the wind.
And where she stepped, moss rose.
Not in invasion.
In return.
Maren appeared beside me.
"She's not one of us," I said.
"No," she said.
"But she's no longer one of him.
And in war, that's the most dangerous kind of person."_
I looked at the horizon.
The first true threat was not Hollow's power.
Not his machine.
It was his truth.
And to defeat it, I wouldn't need more roots.
More fire.
More strength.
I would need to prove —
not that I was stronger.
But that I was right.