They made camp in a ruin.
Not by choice—the forest had simply… opened. Trees pulled back. Roots retreated. Moss flattened into something almost comfortable. It wasn't welcome. It was observation at closer range.
Sai Ji sat with his back to a fallen pillar.
Two fragments rested in his palm. They had stopped pulsing independently. Now they beat in unison—a single heart where there had been two. The Thorn-Rose Mark pulsed with them. His own heart had begun to sync. Three rhythms becoming one.
Lura watched from across the fire.
She'd been watching since the corridor. Since he'd emerged from the vision with the god's final words still echoing in his skull. Since she'd held him while he wasn't there.
"You're syncing," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"Yeah."
"To them or to him?"
Sai Ji considered. "Don't think there's a difference anymore."
Fern's head snapped up. "There's a difference. There's always a difference."
"Is there?" Sai Ji's voice was quiet. Not defeated. Considering. "They're pieces of the same thing. I'm carrying them. They're changing me. At what point does 'carrying' become 'becoming'?"
No one answered.
Because no one knew.
Nyx broke the silence.
"Okay. Hypothetical."
Aeliana groaned. "Nyx—"
"You're the one who runs diagnostics on everything. Hypotheticals are diagnostics for the future." He leaned forward, firelight catching his sharp features. "Say you collect all seven. Say the god becomes whole again. Say he's standing there in front of you, looking exactly like you, remembering everything you've forgotten."
He paused.
"Who goes home?"
The question hung in the air.
Sai Ji felt it land in his chest. Not as threat. As inevitability. He'd been avoiding it since the first fragment. Since the sentinels. Since the Guardian knelt.
Who goes home?
The god who fell? Or the man who survived?
"The fragments aren't him," he said slowly. "They're memories. Deaths. Moments he couldn't let go."
"You didn't answer the question."
"I know."
Lura stood. Walked around the fire. Sat beside him—closer than before, shoulder to shoulder, warmth against the forest's ancient cold.
"Then I'll answer," she said. "You go home. All of you. The god had his chance. He made his choice. He chose to fall."
She looked at Sai Ji.
"You chose to keep getting up."
Fern nodded slowly. "She's got a point."
"She's got hope," Nyx corrected. "Not the same thing."
"Hope's all we've got right now." Midnight Wolf's voice was raspy from disuse. He'd been quiet since the arena, processing data that shouldn't exist. "System's still corrupted. Zone permissions are still theoretical. We're walking through a forest that eats memories and grows flowers out of corpses. Hope's not a strategy—it's the only thing keeping us moving."
Sai Ji looked at his pack.
Sharp-edged Lura, who'd waited twenty years for a door to open and finally stopped waiting.
Loyal Fern, who was scared of losing his friend to something he couldn't fight.
Nyx, who followed because following was easier than leading.
Aeliana, whose diagnostics kept failing because reality kept breaking.
Midnight Wolf, who'd seen the system's back end and knew how thin the walls between worlds really were.
They were here. In this impossible forest. Following someone who might not exist by the end.
"Why?" he asked.
They blinked.
"Why what?"
"Why are you still here? Still following? Still—" He stopped. Started again. "I don't know what I'm becoming. I don't know if there's room for both of us—me and him—in whatever comes out at the end. I don't know if I'll still be me."
Lura's hand found his.
"You pulled me out of that corridor," she said. "The god didn't. The fragments didn't. You did. You with your stupid claws and your worse jokes and your absolute refusal to let anyone die on your watch."
She squeezed.
"That's not going anywhere."
The fragments pulsed.
Not in warning. In response. As though they'd heard Lura's words and had opinions about them.
Sai Ji looked down.
Two bone-colored stones, warm against his palm. But beneath the warmth, something else. Something that felt almost like—
Recognition.
Not of him.
Of her.
The fragments remembered Lura. Remembered the corridor. Remembered the seven-year-old waiting at an unopening door.
Remembered being used to pull her out.
"She is pack."
The voice was faint. Barely a whisper. Coming from both fragments at once.
"You claimed her. We claimed her. The forest remembers claiming."
Sai Ji's breath caught.
"What?"
"The forest does not release what it begins to digest. But it recognizes what is claimed by a sovereign."
Pause.
"She is claimed. She is recognized. She is—"
"Mine."
The word came from Sai Ji. But not entirely. It came from the Werewolf King. From the beast that had been coiled beneath his ribs since the first zone, waiting for permission to protect.
From something older than both.
Lura stared at him.
The Mark blazed.
The fragments blazed.
And for one heartbeat—one endless, impossible heartbeat—Sai Ji felt what it meant to be whole.
Then it passed.
He was himself again. Breathing hard. Claws extended. Lura's hand still in his.
"What," she whispered, "was that?"
"I don't—" He stopped. Looked at the fragments. "I think they're waking up.
Aeliana's diagnostics exploded.
Numbers cascaded across her HUD—impossible numbers, readings that shouldn't exist, data from outside the system's architecture. She cursed, slammed her gauntlet, watched the readings climb anyway.
"The fragments are broadcasting," she said. Voice tight. "Not to us. To each other. They're—they're communicating."
"Communicating what?"
"I don't—" She paused. Went pale. "They're calling the others."
Far in the distance, deep in the Weald's impossible depths, something answered.
Not a roar. Not a howl. Pulses. Five of them, spaced evenly, rhythmic as breathing.
The fragments in Sai Ji's hand pulsed back.
A conversation. Older than language. Older than the system. Older than the Resets that had scraped the world clean.
Here, the two fragments said.
Coming, the five replied.
"How long?" Sai Ji asked.
Aeliana's diagnostics flickered. "At current convergence rate? Days. Maybe less. They're moving toward us as much as we're moving toward them."
"Moving how?"
She looked at him. "Through the forest. Through the roots. Through the bodies they're planted in. They're not just fragments anymore. They're growing."
They found it at dawn.
A figure standing at the edge of camp. Armor black as obsidian. Crown of twisted roots. Face—
Sai Ji's face.
Not the fused figure from the corridor. This one was moving. Standing. Breathing.
Eyes open.
Lura's weapon was out before Sai Ji could move. Fern's shield was up. Nyx had vanished into shadow, reappearing behind the figure with blades at its throat.
The figure didn't react.
"You carry two of me."
The voice was the same. Ancient. Weary. But different—closer. Less memory, more presence.
"I carry one of myself. The rest are waking."
Sai Ji stepped forward.
"Who are you?"
"The third." The figure raised a hand—slow, deliberate, movements still thick with centuries of stillness. "The one who fell in the eastern reaches. The one who was planted in a warrior who came looking for glory."
Its eyes—Sai Ji's eyes, but older—dropped to the fragments in Sai Ji's palm.
"You have released two of us. We felt it. We are grateful."
Fern's voice was sharp. "Released? You're standing right there."
"I am standing. I am not living." The figure's head tilted. That avian wrongness again. "I am a body that remembers being alive. A corpse that has not finished dying. A fragment that has not been collected."
It looked at Sai Ji.
"Collect me."
Sai Ji didn't move.
"Collect you how?"
"The same as the others. Reach. Take. Release."
"And then what? You crumble? Become roots? Feed the forest that's been digesting you?"
"Yes."
The word was simple. Absolute. Without regret.
Sai Ji's claws extended. Not in threat—in frustration.
"You're standing there. Talking. Thinking. You're more than a fragment. You're—"
"I am a corpse that remembers." The figure's voice sharpened. Just slightly. The first sign of something beneath the ancient calm. "I am a wound that will not close. I am a song that has been singing the same note for millennia because the singer forgot how to stop."
It stepped forward. Fern's shield pressed against its chest. It didn't stop.
"You carry two of me. You have felt what that means. The memories. The weight. The wanting."
Sai Ji's jaw tightened.
"Now imagine carrying that forever. Imagine never being collected. Never released. Never ending."
The figure's eyes—his eyes—held Sai Ji's.
"I have been standing in this spot for three thousand years. Waiting for someone to come along who could do what you just did."
A pause.
"Please."
The word broke something.
Sai Ji reached forward.
His hand passed through the figure's chest—through armor, through flesh, through three thousand years of waiting—and closed around the fragment.
It came free easily.
The figure's eyes closed.
"Thank you."
It crumbled.
Roots rose to meet it. Moss spread to cover it. Within seconds, nothing remained but a patch of darker soil and the faintest outline of where a body had stood.
Three fragments now pulsed in Sai Ji's palm.
[3 / 7]
[SOVEREIGN FRAGMENT — ACQUIRED]
[New understanding achieved: THE WEIGHT OF WAITING]
[TRIAL STATUS: CONTINUING]
Lura's hand found his arm.
"You okay?"
Sai Ji looked at the soil. At the place where something that wore his face had stood for three thousand years, waiting to die.
"No," he said. "But I'm starting to understand."
They broke camp.
Not because the location was unsafe—because staying felt wrong. Like lingering at a graveside after the funeral ended. Like waiting for someone who had already left.
The fragments pulsed in Sai Ji's palm. Three now, beating in unison. His heartbeat had fully synced. The Thorn-Rose Mark pulsed with them. He could feel the other four—distant, but approaching. Converging.
Here, the three said.
Coming, the four replied.
Lura walked beside him. Closer than before. Since the corridor, since the figure, since she'd held him through visions and watched him release corpses wearing his face—she hadn't left his side.
"You're thinking too loud," she said.
"Learned from Nyx?"
"Learned from watching you." She glanced at him. "The fragments are getting closer. The other four. You can feel them."
"Yeah."
"What happens when they arrive?"
Sai Ji considered the question. Really considered it.
"I don't know. But I think—" He stopped. Started again. "I think the god becomes whole. I think whatever was scattered gets put back together. I think I have to choose what that means."
"And if you choose wrong?"
"Define wrong."
Lura was quiet for a moment. Then: "If you choose something that makes you stop being you."
Sai Ji looked at her.
She was serious. Terrified. Trying not to show it.
"I don't think that's a choice," he said slowly. "I think that's a consequence. I think whatever I choose, I'm going to be changed. The only question is whether there's enough of me left afterward to recognize."
Lura's jaw tightened.
"Then we make sure there is."
"How?"
She met his eyes. "Same way we always do. We stay. We watch. We remind you who you are when you forget."
Behind them, Fern's voice carried forward: "What she said. For the record."
Nyx: "Same."
Aeliana: "Diagnostics aren't great on identity preservation, but I'll try."
Midnight Wolf: "Data suggests pack cohesion improves survival outcomes. I'm in."
Sai Ji looked at them. At this ragged collection of players who had followed him into a forest that ate memories and grew flowers out of corpses.
"…You're all insane."
Lura smiled. It was small. Real.
"Learned from the best."
They walked.
The Weald continued to change. Trees bent slightly as they passed—not deference anymore. Curiosity. The forest had watched Sai Ji release two of its prisoners. It had watched him carry three fragments. It had watched him refuse to become what the fragments wanted.
Now it watched differently.
Less like a predator. More like a witness.
The roots still shifted. The mist still coiled. The memory-cycles still flickered at the edges of vision. But the intent had shifted. From digestion to observation.
From hunger to waiting.
"They're watching us," Lura murmured.
"I know."
"Not like before. Not like prey."
"I know."
"Like—" She struggled for the word. "Like they're curious."
Sai Ji nodded.
The Thorn-Rose Mark pulsed. The fragments pulsed in response. Three heartbeats, becoming one.
We are watched, they seemed to say. We are weighed. We are—
Judged.
The word hung in Sai Ji's mind. Not threat. Not warning. Fact.
The forest that remembered kings was judging whether he deserved to carry its memories.
And it hadn't decided yet.
They found the fourth fragment at sunset.
Not in a body. Not in a corridor. Growing.
A tree stood at the center of a clearing—massive, ancient, its trunk wider than any Sai Ji had ever seen. And at its base, where roots met soil, a figure knelt.
Armor black as obsidian. Crown of twisted roots. Face—
Sai Ji's face.
But this one wasn't standing. Wasn't waiting. Wasn't preserved in wood.
It was growing.
Roots emerged from its chest, from its arms, from its eyes. Flowers bloomed between the roots—pale, delicate, pulsing with fragment-light. The figure's mouth was open in a silent scream that had lasted so long it had become peace.
"The fourth."
The voice came from everywhere. From the tree. From the roots. From the flowers.
"The one who fell in the heart of the Weald. The one who was planted deepest."
Sai Ji approached slowly.
The figure's eyes were gone—replaced by blossoms that turned toward him as he drew near. Tracking him. Recognizing him.
"You carry three."
"Yes."
"You released two."
"Yes."
"You understand what we are."
Sai Ji stopped before the kneeling figure. Before the roots that had grown through it. Before the flowers that had bloomed from its pain.
"You're memories that won't stop remembering. Deaths that won't finish dying. Choices that were never made."
"And you?"
"I'm the one who has to choose."
The figure was silent.
Then, softly:
"Collect me."
Sai Ji reached forward.
His hand passed through roots, through blossoms, through three thousand years of silent screaming—and closed around the fragment.
It came free.
The figure crumbled.
The tree shuddered.
And four fragments pulsed in Sai Ji's palm.
[4 / 7]
[SOVEREIGN FRAGMENT — ACQUIRED]
[New understanding achieved: THE SCREAM THAT BECAME PEACE]
[TRIAL STATUS: ACCELERATING]
[Three fragments remain. Convergence imminent.]
Lura was at his side.
"That's half."
"More than half."
"How many more days?"
Sai Ji looked at the fragments. Felt the others approaching—closer now, much closer, drawn by the conversation he couldn't hear but couldn't stop.
"Not days," he said quietly. "Hours."
The forest held its breath.
The fragments pulsed.
And somewhere in the depths, three pieces of a fallen god stopped waiting and began to move.