The storm had passed, but the sky remained bruised and heavy as Isabella, Shade, and their strike team approached the Eastern Ridge. Smoke still curled from the battlefield behind them, but the silence here was heavier. Tense. Ancient.
The ruins emerged like jagged bones from the ice—obsidian stones veined with glowing runes, half-buried beneath centuries of frost. This was no ordinary site. This was something built before kingdoms, before Voss. Before the wars.
The entrance to Crownroot.
"This place… it hums," Shade murmured, touching the cold black stone. "It's alive."
"It's reacting to us," Isabella said. "To our blood."
Cassia joined them, her breath catching. "It was a myth. The First Throne. The origin of the Line. Voss was obsessed with unlocking it, but even he feared what it might hold."
Alexander crouched near the threshold, examining the shattered corpses of several True Line soldiers. "They tried to force it open. And failed."
"Or," Shade said coldly, "some of them succeeded."
Elias activated a scanning drone. "There's a tunnel beneath the central arch. It descends thousands of feet underground. I'm picking up strange signals—some organic, some mechanical. Whatever they woke up… it's not dormant anymore."
Isabella stepped forward.
"We go in. All of us."
Cassia caught her wrist. "If Crownroot is what I think it is, the moment you cross that threshold, nothing will be the same again."
Isabella looked at her sister—her equal now in power, in pain, in destiny.
"I know," she said. "That's why we do it together."
Shade drew her hood. "Then let's finish what our father started... and end it."
---
The Descent
They entered the ruins.
The tunnel was impossibly smooth, carved by something not human. Faint golden lights flickered along the walls as if recognizing their presence. Symbols ignited under their feet—some in Voss's language, others older. Forgotten.
Deeper and deeper they went, until the silence became deafening.
And then they reached it.
A chamber as wide as a city, its ceiling lost in darkness. At its center was a throne, fused from bone, crystal, and machinery. Behind it, a massive root-like structure pulsed with molten light—breathing slowly, like a sleeping god.
The Crownroot.
Elias's voice cracked. "This isn't a throne room. It's a machine. A seed. A weapon."
Cassia nodded. "Designed to rewrite bloodlines. To forge kings from chaos."
And standing in front of it… waiting in the shadows...
A figure.
Cloaked. Masked. Radiating power that warped the air around him.
"Welcome, daughters," the figure said, voice cold as the grave.
"You're just in time to witness the rebirth of the world."
---