Light bled away into darkness, but the darkness itself pulsed. It wasn't empty; it was alive, breathing, waiting.
Cobi floated within it, chained by threads of silver that connected to everything — the earth, the sky, every living cell vibrating at the same frequency as his heartbeat. He wasn't falling or rising. He was.
Something inside him broke open.
Every thought became hundreds. Memories weren't linear anymore; they tangled into constellations of color and sound. His body no longer belonged to one moment — it stretched across centuries.
He saw himself in every life humanity ever lived. Farmers. Warriors. Children. Lovers. Mom sobbing into her hands at a kitchen table. Dad walking away into rain. Grandma humming lullabies. Jace's small fingers clutching his shirt that night they buried their grandfather.
Each memory filled his lungs like air, until time itself cracked open.
He stood barefoot in a different world — or maybe in all worlds at once.
The forest around him was unrecognizable: the same Willowridge woods, but glowing, ancient. Trees miles high draped with silver moss. Rivers of light ran through open wounds in the ground. The silhouettes of animals shimmered in and out of existence.
When he exhaled, the world breathed with him.
"The vessel becomes," whispered the voice of the Root Mind. "Your thoughts will be roads, your breath the wind."
Cobi looked down at his hands. Light moved underneath his skin, tracing veins like living sap. He could feel the movement of every root underground, every gust above the branches, every drop of rain forming miles away. Creation itself resonated with him.
He took one step forward. The air rippled. Tree bark healed itself where his foot touched earth. A dying flower bloomed again.
He gasped — and with that breath came something else.
Visions.
First, fragments:
— Cities swallowed by emerald overgrowth.
— A sea of people bowing before a giant silver tree.
— Jace, older, eyes lifeless and glittering with silver veins, clutching a blade made of vine.
— The face of Gia, serene but distant, watching the world burn with something like love.
Then a clearer image: himself, standing in the middle of a ruined city, vines crawling up skyscrapers, humans on their knees. His voice echoed across the sky.
"I never wanted to be a god."
He staggered backward, horrified. "No… no. That's not me!"
"Every creation repeats the first," the voice replied. "The more you fight it, the closer you become to it."
Cobi grabbed his chest, feeling both human panic and something much larger stirring beneath it — like an ocean watching him from inside his ribs. The silver light flared until his surroundings flickered between present and future, one moment a quiet forest, the next a wasteland of roots devouring the earth.
"Show me how to stop it!" he shouted.
"To stop it, you must remember why she began it."
"How?"
The answer came as an image: thirteen petals unfolding across his mind, each glowing with a different hue. The plants. The fragments of Gia. Their powers ignited throughout the earth again — each one seeking a vessel.
If they awakened together, the world would collapse into rebirth — or extinction.
He dropped to his knees as the vision faded, blood running from his nose, eyes blazing with silver light. His voice trembled.
"I can feel her in me," he whispered. "I can feel everything."
"Then you are ready," the voice said, fading. "But beware, vessel — power without purpose becomes the same grief that made her."
When Cobi opened his eyes, he lay halfway between dream and reality. The roots retreated from his skin, leaving faint luminescent scars like constellations across his arms.
In the distance, thunder rumbled. Not from the sky — from underground. The other plants were waking.
And somewhere, through the trembling earth, he felt Jace's heartbeat pulsing faintly — not free, but alive.