Juna reached the highest exterior bough platform just as the upper stairwell began to twist with grey corruption.
Juna kept her landing route visible to the people below rather than vanishing into the corrupted upper boughs.
Looking upward into the morning sky above the capital, she saw an anomaly that did not belong to the natural world.
A flat disk of unnatural grey light hung suspended forty paces above the canopy, mimicking the shape of a sun.
Thin grey filaments descended from the artificial disk, piercing the crown boughs to transmit the hive mind's commands directly into the palace.
Juna unfurled four radiant solar Wings against the mountain wind, feeling the turbulent air currents sweep past her shoulders.
"The foreign voice constructed a false sky above the capital, so the roots below are no longer its only roads," she said.
Hajin's calm, steady voice answered immediately through their shared summoner link from the lower junction below.
