Under the influence of water's patient cadence, the void began to look less like an empty tomb and more like a place where low things might grow.
The plant element did not announce itself with drama. There was no roar, no lightning strike—only a slow, subterranean unfurling. It felt like the memory of a seed waking after a long winter: small, insistent, and infinitely determined. Krish felt a pull toward renewal that reached into places the other elements did not touch—tissue, cell, root.
Where fire had burned and water had soothed, plant brought green. Tiny shoots of sensation wove through his veins, delicate but alive. They threaded themselves into scars and wounds and whispered that those marks could be repurposed, that flaws could become grafts for something sturdier.
His body adopted subtle changes—regenerative feedback accelerated, scars closed with the patience of bud and bloom rather than the bluntness of flame. The sense of mortality loosened its grip; new growth meant time could be folded into cycles, and cycles could be harnessed.
Silvia's murmur sounded like wind through leaves. "Renewal is often quieter than ruin," she said. "Yet it is more insistent. Flowers open every morning to proof of it."
Krish practiced the art of germination. In the hush of the void he coaxed imaginary seeds into life. He willed roots to clasp phantom soil, then asked them to retract and anchor in new directions. These exercises read like childish games, but each successful "sprout" had real effect: his body's regenerative algorithms—those ancient patterns threaded through soul and flesh—responded and became more robust.
Plant life within him became an ecological system rather than a single ability. It supported water's balance, it fed energy back into his bones fortified by earth, and it provided a soft interface between elements that could otherwise clash. A scratch now healed not merely by patching, but by growing a new epidermal tapestry that resisted further harm.
One of the strangest gifts of the plant element was perspective. Plants grow slowly, and surviving epochs of change is their art. That slow persistence taught Krish to tolerate waiting. It taught him to recognize that some victories are seasons, not single strokes of genius or might.
RC's tone took on a faint, almost amused cadence. "Biotic integration deepening. Regenerative cycles now autonomous at microcellular level."
He let a smile touch his lips and felt an odd warmth when the void seemed to answer with an echo of green. Even in nothingness, life could insist upon itself.
---