The tunnel system beneath Murkmire stretched for miles, branching into networks that predated the Dominion's founding. Old mining operations, smugglers' routes, escape passages from wars nobody remembered. Seraphine led them confidently through the darkness, Memoria's silver glow providing the only light beyond Lyrienne's dimmed Lumes.
"How do you know where we're going?" Corvin asked. "These tunnels have been sealed for centuries."
"Memoria remembers the path," Seraphine said. "And more importantly, it remembers the border. Realms are just places where reality decided to fracture in specific patterns. If you can sense those fracture lines, you can find the thin places where crossing is easier."
They walked for hours, ascending gradually until the tunnel walls changed from Murkmire's damp stone to something drier, warmer. The air lost its waterlogged quality and gained something else—a sweet, cloying scent like flowers left too long in a vase.
"Thornsveil," Mirethorn breathed. "We're crossing into Thornsveil."
The tunnel opened onto a cavern lit by bioluminescent moss that grew in intricate patterns across the walls. But these patterns weren't random—they formed words in an ancient language, the same language Corvin had seen in the deepest parts of the Athenaeum.
"What does it say?" Lyrienne asked.
"'Here lies the boundary between death and life,'" Mirethorn translated, his voice reverent. "'Step carefully, for in Thornsveil, the distinction blurs.'"
They emerged from the cave into a landscape that stole Corvin's breath.
Thornsveil was beautiful in the way funeral flowers were beautiful—stunning and terrible and shot through with melancholy. The realm existed in perpetual twilight, but warmer than Umbrafell's cold darkness. Here, the sky held purples and deep blues, and scattered throughout were flowers that glowed with their own internal light. Night-blooming jasmine. Moonflowers. Ghost orchids. Things that shouldn't exist together but did here, thriving in the eternal dusk.
The trees were different too—tall and elegant, with black bark and silver leaves that chimed like bells when the wind moved through them. And everywhere, everywhere, there were thorns. Not aggressive, but present. Reminding visitors that beauty came with pain.
"It's gorgeous," Lyrienne whispered.
"It's dying," Mirethorn corrected, and his voice held grief. "Look closer."
Corvin did. The flowers that bloomed so brilliantly—many of them had edges that were browning, wilting. The trees' silver leaves were streaked with black. And the vines that crept across the landscape seemed to pulse with an unhealthy rhythm, like a heart beating too fast.
"Virelda's ritual is affecting the entire realm," Mirethorn continued. "She's pulling all of Thornsveil's life-death energy into the Garden Palace, trying to channel it through the Floros Core. If she succeeds, these flowers won't just bloom forever—they'll only bloom. No death. No decay. No natural cycle. Just eternal, static life until the realm chokes on its own growth."
"Then we need to stop her," Draven said. "Where's the Thorn Road?"
Mirethorn pointed to a path that wound through the flowers—not an actual road, but a trail where thorny vines grew so densely they formed walls on either side. The path itself was clear, almost inviting, and flowers bloomed in profusion along its edges.
"That's it," he said. "The Thorn Road only opens for those with royal blood or those the gardens love. I've been exiled, so the gardens should kill me on sight. But with Draven here..." He looked at the disgraced prince. "You'll have to lead us. Your blood is the key."
Draven approached the Thorn Road cautiously. The moment his boots touched the path, the flowers around him bloomed brighter, and the thorny walls seemed to lean inward, welcoming him.
"It remembers me," he said, wonder in his voice. "After fifteen years, it still remembers."
"Gardens don't forget," Mirethorn said. "Plants have memory too. They know who nurtured them, who loved them, who betrayed them."
They began the journey down the Thorn Road. Draven led, followed by the others in single file. The path wound through increasingly dense vegetation, past flower gardens that seemed to whisper as they passed, past trees whose trunks were carved with names of lovers long dead.
"This was the royal promenade," Draven explained as they walked. "Where the Thornsveil court would stroll during festivals. Every royal family member planted something along this path. That oak there—" He pointed to a massive tree with flowers growing directly from its bark. "That was planted by King Thessian the Third, five centuries ago. It's never stopped blooming since."
"And that?" Corvin asked, pointing to a patch of roses that were both white and black simultaneously, existing in superposition.
"Virelda's roses," Draven said quietly. "She planted them the year she took the throne. They're called Mourning Dawns. They bloom in states of grief and joy simultaneously. She said they represented Thornsveil itself—a realm caught between life and death, capable of experiencing both beauties at once."
They walked for hours, and the path never seemed to end. The Garden Palace was visible in the distance—a structure of white stone and black iron, wrapped so completely in flowering vines that it looked more like a living creature than a building. But no matter how long they walked, it never seemed to get closer.
"The path is fighting us," Seraphine said. "The gardens are loyal to Virelda. They don't want us to reach her."
"Then we convince them otherwise," Mirethorn said. He knelt and pressed his hands into the earth beside the path. His petal-magic flowed out—Corvin could see it, emerald light that spread through the soil like roots. "I'm asking the gardens to remember. To remember what Virelda was before the Core corrupted her. To remember the woman who loved them, who nurtured them, who understood that death was necessary for new life."
The flowers around them shuddered.
Then, slowly, the Garden Palace began to grow closer. The path was shortening, bending reality to bring them to their destination.
"It's working," Lyrienne said. "The gardens are listening."
But something else was listening too.
A sound echoed across the landscape—a horn, deep and resonant, carrying warning. Then another. Then a dozen more.
"The Royal Guard knows we're here," Draven said. "The gardens must have alerted them."
Figures appeared along the Thorn Road ahead—soldiers in green and gold, wearing masks shaped like flower petals. They carried weapons made of thorned vines and crystallized sap, and they moved with the fluid grace of people who'd trained in these gardens their entire lives.
"Halt!" their captain called. "By order of Queen Virelda, no one may approach the Garden Palace. Turn back or be cut down."
"We're not turning back," Draven called. "I'm Prince Draven Midnight, and I'm invoking blood-right. The gardens have allowed me passage. You have no authority to stop me."
The captain's mask tilted, considering. "Prince Draven died in exile fifteen years ago. The man before me is an imposter."
"Then test me," Draven said. He drew his knife—the strange crystallized-regret blade—and cut his palm. Blood welled up, and he let it drip onto the Thorn Road.
The moment his blood touched the path, the flowers exploded into bloom. Not just near him, but everywhere—thousands of flowers blooming simultaneously in response to royal blood. The thorny walls leaned away from the soldiers and toward Draven, protecting him.
The captain stepped back. "Your blood is true. But your exile is also true. The gardens are confused."
"Then let the gardens decide," Draven said. "If they want us dead, they'll kill us themselves. If they want us to proceed, they'll protect us. You and your soldiers are unnecessary."
For a long moment, no one moved.
Then the vines that made up the Thorn Road's walls began to shift. They grew outward, gently but firmly pushing the soldiers away from the path, forcing them back into the surrounding gardens.
The captain tried to resist, but a vine wrapped around his ankle and pulled. He fell, and more vines caught him, lifting him and his entire squad away from the road and depositing them safely but firmly outside the path's boundaries.
The gardens had chosen.
"Run," Draven said. "Before they regroup."
They ran.
The Thorn Road compressed around them, speeding their passage, until the Garden Palace was no longer distant but immediate—rising before them like a mountain of stone and flowers. The main gates stood open, and through them, Corvin could see the palace's interior courtyard, where vines had grown so dense they formed a solid canopy overhead.
They entered the palace grounds.
Inside, the air was thick with pollen and magic. Every surface was covered in flowers—walls, floors, ceiling. It was claustrophobic and beautiful and wrong. The flowers shouldn't all be blooming at once. There should be some that were budding, some that were wilting, some that were just stems waiting for the right season.
But here, everything bloomed. Everything was locked in that single moment of perfect flowering. And beneath the beauty, Corvin could sense the strain—reality buckling under the weight of enforced permanence.
"The throne room is at the center of the palace," Mirethorn said. "Through the Hall of Seasons, past the Queen's Garden, into the Heartwood Chamber where Virelda holds court."
"Is that where she'll be performing the ritual?" Lyrienne asked.
"No. The ritual requires the Deep Garden—a place beneath the palace where the realm's life-death nexus is strongest. That's where Floros was originally hidden, and that's where Virelda will try to bond with it."
They moved through the palace, encountering no resistance. The guards they passed seemed frozen, standing at their posts with flowers growing from their armor, vines wrapped around their weapons. They breathed, blinked, lived—but barely. Like they'd been caught in the same stasis as everything else.
"She's draining them," Seraphine observed. "Using their life force to fuel the ritual. They're not dead, but they're not quite alive either. Suspended between states."
"Can you free them?" Corvin asked.
"Not without disrupting the ritual. Their energy is already woven into Virelda's spell. Breaking the connection would kill them instantly."
"Then we have to stop the ritual before it completes," Draven said. "That's the only way to save them."
They reached the Heartwood Chamber—a throne room where the throne itself had been grown from a single massive tree. Its roots stretched down through the floor, presumably into the Deep Garden below. And carved into every surface were names.
"The Dead Kings and Queens of Thornsveil," Mirethorn explained. "Every ruler for the past thousand years. Their names carved into the Heartwood, their memories preserved in the wood. It's tradition—when a monarch dies, they become part of the tree. Part of the realm itself."
"Virelda's name isn't here," Lyrienne noted.
"Because she's not dead yet," Draven said. "And if she succeeds with Floros, she never will be. She'll rule forever, locked in the same eternal bloom as everything else."
A voice echoed through the chamber—feminine, musical, threaded with power and madness:
"Draven. I knew you'd come. The gardens whispered your arrival."
A figure emerged from behind the throne. Queen Virelda.
She was tall and elegant, with skin the color of dark earth and hair that cascaded down her back in waves of silver-white. She wore a gown made entirely of living flowers that bloomed and rebloom ed continuously, and her eyes—her eyes were the green of new growth, but shot through with something else. Something that pulsed and writhed like roots beneath soil.
The Floros Core was inside her. Not fully bonded, but already integrated enough to be changing her.
"My love," Draven said, and his voice cracked. "Please. Stop this. You're killing Thornsveil."
"I'm saving it," Virelda corrected. "Death is a corruption. An error in the design. I'm fixing that error. Making Thornsveil perfect. Eternal. Beautiful forever."
"Beauty requires impermanence," Mirethorn said, stepping forward. "Your Majesty, please. I've served you for thirty years. I've watched you cultivate gardens, breed new flowers, create beauty through understanding the balance of life and death. This isn't you. This is the Core's influence—"
"The Core showed me truth!" Virelda's voice rose. "Everything I've built, everything I've nurtured—it all dies eventually. The flowers wilt. The gardens fade. Even the most beautiful creation succumbs to entropy. But with Floros fully bonded, I can stop that. I can make beauty permanent."
"At what cost?" Corvin asked. "Look around. Your guards are suspended between life and death. Your gardens are choking on their own growth. This isn't preservation—it's suffocation."
Virelda's gaze fixed on him, and Corvin felt the weight of her attention like a physical force. "You. The shadow-touched. You hold Umbra. You understand power. You know what it's like to carry a Core's memory inside you."
"I do. And I know how easy it is to let that power corrupt you. To let the Core's desires become your own."
"You think I'm corrupted?" Virelda laughed—a sound like wind through dead flowers. "You think the Core controls me? No, child. I control it. I'm forcing a bond that shouldn't be possible. I'm bending the Core to my will through sheer magical force and centuries of necroflora study. If anything, I'm the one doing the corrupting."
"Then prove it," Seraphine said, stepping forward. Memoria pulsed in her hands. "If you truly control Floros, release the ritual. Let the guards go. Return Thornsveil to its natural cycle."
Virelda's eyes widened. "Memoria. The Eleventh Core. I thought it was a myth."
"It's not. And it gives me the power to make you remember what you were before this madness took hold." Seraphine raised the Core, and silver light flooded the chamber. "I can make you remember, Virelda. Remember who you were. Remember why you loved these gardens in the first place."
"Don't—" Virelda stepped back. "Don't you dare. I don't want to remember. Remembering means feeling the pain of loss. Remembering means acknowledging that everything I love will die. I won't go back to that. I won't!"
Vines erupted from the floor, attacking with speeds that should have been impossible. They wrapped around Seraphine, pulling her down, trying to separate her from Memoria.
Corvin's shadow lunged, slicing through the vines, but more kept coming. The entire palace was Virelda's weapon, and she wielded it with desperate fury.
"Everyone who loves me tries to stop me!" Virelda shouted. "Mirethorn, who betrayed me and fled. Draven, who killed his own brother in my name and then expected forgiveness. And now you strangers, coming to tell me I'm wrong, I'm mad, I'm corrupted. None of you understand. None of you see what I see—a world that could be perfect if only death would stop taking everything beautiful away!"
"Death isn't the enemy!" Mirethorn shouted back, using his petal-magic to hold back the attacking vines. "Death is what gives life meaning! The flowers are beautiful because they're temporary. If they bloomed forever, they'd lose their significance!"
"Then let them lose their significance! I don't care! I just want them to stay!"
The floor cracked. The Heartwood groaned. And beneath them, deep in the palace's foundation, something pulsed with massive power.
"The ritual is accelerating," Seraphine said. "She's triggered the final phase. If we don't stop her in the next few minutes, the bond will complete and Thornsveil will be locked in eternal bloom."
"How do we stop it?" Lyrienne asked. Her Lumes swarmed around her, trying to provide light and protection simultaneously.
"Someone needs to reach Floros directly," Seraphine said. "Touch the Core. Either bond with it properly or convince it to reject Virelda's forced connection."
"I'll go," Corvin said.
"You can't," Draven protested. "The Deep Garden is accessible only through the throne. Through the Heartwood. You'd have to go through Virelda."
"Then I'll go through her."
Corvin's shadow exploded outward, growing to its full size—twenty feet tall, solid as stone, eyes glowing silver with Umbra's power. It grabbed him and pulled, dragging him across the chamber toward Virelda in a burst of speed that made the air scream.
Virelda raised her hand, and the palace responded—vines, thorns, flowers all converging to form a wall between them.
But Corvin's shadow was memory given form. It remembered every Thornevale who'd ever fought, ever bled, ever refused to surrender. It remembered battles from before the Primacy shattered. It remembered war.
The shadow tore through Virelda's defenses like they were paper.
Corvin collided with the Queen of Thornsveil, and they fell together—not onto the floor, but through it, through the Heartwood's roots, descending into the Deep Garden as reality bent around them.
They fell for what felt like hours, through layers of earth and memory and compressed magic, until they landed in a chamber that should not exist.
The Deep Garden.
It was vast—impossibly vast, larger than the entire palace above. The floor was covered in flowers that glowed with spectral light, and in the center, suspended in a cage of thorned vines that pulsed with life-death energy, hung a sphere of pure green light.
The Floros Core.
And it was screaming.
Not audibly—the Core had no voice. But Corvin could feel its distress, its rejection of what was happening to it. Floros wanted to be wild, free, part of the natural cycle. Being forced into eternal stasis was agony for it.
"Stay away from it!" Virelda shouted, scrambling to her feet. Blood ran from her temple where she'd hit her head in the fall, but she barely seemed to notice. "I'm so close. Just a few more minutes and the bond will be permanent. You can't stop it now."
"I don't want to stop it," Corvin said. "I want to complete it."
He walked toward the Core.
Virelda moved to intercept, but his shadow held her back—gently, but firmly. Not hurting her, just preventing her from interfering.
Corvin stood before Floros. Up close, he could see that the green light wasn't uniform—it swirled and shifted, showing images. Flowers blooming. Gardens growing. Life and death in perfect balance. This was what Floros wanted. Not eternal bloom, but eternal cycle. Growth and decay in harmony.
"I'm going to bond with you," Corvin told the Core. "And I'm going to give you what you want. But you have to help me. You have to reject Virelda's forced connection and accept mine. Can you do that?"
The Core pulsed—a feeling of desperate hope.
Corvin reached out and touched Floros.
The world exploded into green light and memory—not human memory this time, but something older. Plant memory. Earth memory. The slow, patient knowledge of things that grow.
This is wrong, Floros communicated directly into his mind. She tries to stop the cycle. Tries to freeze time. It hurts. Make it stop.
I will, Corvin promised. But I need you to let me in. I need you to bond with me the way you were supposed to bond with the Thornsveil bloodline.
You aren't Thornsveil. You are Shadow. Darkness. Death without life.
I'm also life. My family were archivists. We preserved memories, kept histories alive. We understood that death is just another part of the story. Please. Trust me.
Floros hesitated. Then, slowly, it began to merge with him.
The sensation was different from bonding with Umbra. That had been cold, dark, like drowning in memory. This was warm, growing, like roots spreading through rich soil. Floros flowed into him, not into his shadow but into his flesh, his bones, his blood.
And the two Cores recognized each other.
Umbra and Floros. Shadow and life. Death and growth. They were complementary, not opposing. They harmonized.
Corvin gasped as power flooded through him—not just from Floros, but from both Cores working together. His shadow became threaded with green light. The flowers around him bloomed and died and bloomed again in rapid succession, responding to his presence.
He was life. He was death. He was memory. He was growth.
He was something new.
"No," Virelda whispered. "No, you can't—that was supposed to be mine—"
She collapsed, and the partial bond that had been forming between her and Floros shattered completely. The life-energy she'd been siphoning from her guards, from the palace, from the realm itself, rushed back to its sources.
Above them, in the palace proper, guards gasped as they woke from stasis. Flowers resumed their natural cycles. The strain on reality eased.
Thornsveil began to breathe again.
Corvin approached Virelda. She looked broken—not physically, but spiritually. Like something essential inside her had cracked.
"I just wanted them to stay," she whispered. "The beautiful things. I just wanted them to stay."
"I know," Corvin said gently. "But they can't. And that's what makes them precious."
He offered her his hand.
She stared at it for a long moment, then began to cry—deep, wrenching sobs that seemed to come from her core.
Draven dropped from above, having found his own way down. He ran to Virelda and pulled her into his arms, and she clung to him like a drowning woman clutching driftwood.
"I'm sorry," she kept saying. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean—I just couldn't bear to lose anything else—"
"I know," Draven murmured. "I know. It's over now. It's over."
The others descended more slowly—Mirethorn using vine-magic to lower himself, Lyrienne riding a platform of concentrated Lume-light, Seraphine simply stepping through space like distance was negotiable.
"You did it," Seraphine said, studying Corvin with those silver eyes. "You bonded with two Cores and didn't fragment. The harmonization worked."
"How do you feel?" Lyrienne asked.
Corvin took inventory. He felt... complete. Like parts of himself that had always been missing were finally present. His shadow still moved independently, but now it was threaded with green light. And he could feel Floros's presence alongside Umbra—not competing, but complementing. Shadow and growth. Memory and life.
"I feel ready," he said. "For whatever comes next."
"What comes next," Mirethorn said, "is figuring out what to do with Virelda. She's committed crimes against her realm. Against reality itself. The Thornsveil court will want justice."
"The court can wait," Draven said, still holding Virelda. "Right now, she needs healing. She needs time to recover from what the Core did to her mind."
They ascended from the Deep Garden to find the palace in chaos—guards confused, servants terrified, the entire structure of Virelda's reign collapsing now that she was no longer in control.
Mirethorn took charge, his natural authority asserting itself. "The Queen is unwell," he announced to the gathered court. "She will be taking a period of seclusion to recover. In the interim, Prince Draven Midnight—whose exile is hereby revoked—will serve as regent."
There were murmurs, protests, but Draven's blood was royal and the gardens had accepted him. The objections died quickly.
They stayed in Thornsveil for two days, helping stabilize the realm, ensuring Virelda was safely sequestered with healers who could help her mind recover from the Core's influence. Draven stayed with her constantly, and slowly—so slowly—Corvin watched her begin to come back to herself.
On the third day, as they prepared to leave, Virelda called for Corvin.
She looked smaller now, more human. The flowers in her hair had wilted, and her eyes were clear—sad, but clear.
"Thank you," she said. "For stopping me. For saving my realm from my own madness."
"Thank the gardens," Corvin said. "They're what really saved you. They remembered who you were."
"I won't forget this debt. If you ever need Thornsveil's aid, you have it. The full resources of my realm, for whatever purpose you require."
"I'll remember."
As they left Thornsveil, crossing back toward the borders between realms, Corvin reflected on what they'd accomplished. Two Cores claimed. One queen saved from herself. One realm restored to balance.
But they were only a third of the way through the journey.
Seven Cores remained.
And somewhere out there, others were still searching for them.
The race continued.