Chapter 289: The Guardian of the Dew
The door to the Heart-Root Chamber didn't just break; it screamed.
As Leon retracted the Breaker's Hammer, the shattered remains of the root-gate hissed, bleeding sap that looked disturbingly like black oil. The smell hit us instantly—a cloying, suffocating mixture of ozone, sulfur, and the sweet, sickly scent of rotting orchids.
"Masks up," I ordered, my voice muffled by my scarf. "Don't breathe the spores."
We stepped over the threshold.
If the previous tunnels were the capillaries of the World Tree, this was the ventricle. The chamber was immense, a spherical hollow carved naturally inside the massive central taproot of the tree. The walls were lined with pulsing, golden veins that thrummed with a rhythm so deep I felt it in the marrow of my bones.
Thrum-thrum. Thrum-thrum.
But my eyes—and the greedy eyes of the Assassin beside me—were drawn to the center.
There, in a natural basin formed by twisted white roots, lay the pool.
