Chapter 110 – "A Soft World is Easier to Burn"
"Before fire, there must be softness. Before the end, comfort."
---
Scene 1 – A Quiet Breath
The morning arrives.
The sun slowly creeps into the horizon.
Levi and Seed share a quiet moment sitting beneath a tree that hums with Root energy.
It looks like paradise. Seed inches closer to Levi, brushing fingers. He doesn't pull away.
Levi (looking to the sky): "Are you still trying to fix me?"
Seed: "No,"
Seed whispers.
Seed: "I think I'm just trying to stay broken next to you."
---
Scene 2 – Reen's Deductions
Reen is analyzing data from the grove. She maps patterns in the spread of Rootlings and begins suspecting that Levi's emotional state is central to the Root Body's expansion.
Reen: "It's not just proximity. It's Levi. Or something inside him."
---
Scene 3 – Unnamed Rootling
The crew meets a Rootling at a checkpoint. He looks almost human but speaks with a dull smile.
Rootling: "I don't care what the philosophy says. I feel warm. That's enough."
His answer unnerves them more than full-blown zealotry would have.
---
Scene 4 – Counting the Lost
Matthew counts population figures. They realize 72,000 out of 80,000 people are now Rootlings. The numbers terrify everyone.
Maiku (says softly): "We might already be too late."
Jakku: "It's better late than never."
---
Scene 5 – Close Enough to Touch
Levi and Seed are alone again. He holds her wrist, trembling, and almost kisses her. But when he closes his eyes, he sees petals—not lips.
Levi: "Even in my peace, something's wrong."
---
Scene 6 – A Hollow Refusal
A lone villager publicly refuses the Root Body's latest teaching.
He claims to still feel himself.
He is ignored at first, then quietly taken by vines that grow from Julio itself.
---
Scene 7 – Jakku's Blade and Blood
Jakku tests his sword on a small Root shrine.
The shrine bleeds sap. Gift records this.
Jakku wonders if the Root has started creating flesh out of wood.
---
Scene 8 – Sermon of Softness
The Root Body speaks to a crowd through a proxy Rootling with blossoming lips:
Root Body: "When the world is soft, it can be reshaped. This is not control. This is mercy. Let yourself go."
---
Scene 9 – The Smile of Surrender
Levi walks past a crowd of Rootlings smiling blankly. He pauses. One looks like a girl he saved months ago. She does not recognize him.
---
Scene 10 – Reen's Theory
Reen tells the crew her theory (outside those two): The Root Body is cultivating weakness—not out of malice, but to prepare something.
Reen: "This isn't utopia. It's fertilizer."
---
Scene 11 – The Fusion Hypothesis
Maiku guesses part of it: that the Root Body wants to merge with Levi or rather the Root Avatar.
They remember it. It was fate.
The merge.
Maybe perhaps something greater.
---
Scene 12 – The Plan to Silence Rebellion
The Root Body becomes aware that small factions are resisting.
It begins engineering a new breed of Rootlings called "Receptors"—creatures that mimic emotion and monitor dissent invisibly.
---
Scene 13 – Levi's Question
Levi asks Seed a painful question:
Levi: "If I give in to this peace, will you stay with me?"
Seed hesitates. That hesitation splits the moment open.
---
Scene 14 – A Memory Corrupted
Jakku replays an old memory of his brother.
The memory file has been rewritten.
His brother now smiles and repeats Root Body phrases. He cries, quietly.
---
Scene 15 – A Rootling Child's Lullaby
They witness a Rootling child singing a lullaby in a language that didn't exist before.
Reen realizes: The Root Body is creating culture. Not just infection—but replacement.
---
Scene 16 – The Breaking Point
Levi lashes out, trying to destroy a Root pillar. His hand burns. The Root Body speaks directly into his mind:
Root Body: "You are the seed of the new world. Why do you resist your bloom?"
---
Scene 17 – Almost a Kiss
Seed holds Levi after he collapses. For a moment, their lips nearly touch—but just before, the wind carries a voice from a nearby Rootling:
> "Let go. Let go. Let go."
They pull apart.
---
Scene 18 – Final Revelation
The crew combines everything they've discovered. Together, they piece together 80% of the plan:
The Root Body is merging people into comfort.
It plans to use Levi as a central node.
The goal is to destroy the current world and create one ruled by Root logic and plant life.
Reen: "He's not saving the world, he's composting it."
To Be Continued....
Narrator (Closing Monologue):
---
Before eruption, there is always hush.
Seed watches Levi. Not to save him. Not yet.
But to understand the ache that makes him breathe slower than usual.
Their silence isn't peace—it's exhaustion pretending.
---
Reen listens as Levi names what was taken.
He hears the absences: people gone, memories eaten, laughter scrubbed clean.
The truth is curling behind Levi's words like smoke from a slow fire.
---
A child beams, too soft, too sweet,
gifting laughter that doesn't match the ground it's growing from.
It is happiness designed—not felt.
---
Numbers are uttered.
The crew knows who isn't coming back.
But grief is quieter now—dulled by something whispering it's for the best.
---
Seed and Levi sit side by side.
No words pass. Their closeness isn't comfort—it's a warning.
They are each other's last unswallowed thought.
---
Seed says no. Softly, firmly.
But the Root Body doesn't punish.
It thanks her, as if disobedience is another branch of faith.
---
Jakku's shrine trembles.
His blade enters wood, and it shudders like skin.
A sacred place, and something behind it, breathing.
---
The Root Body speaks in lullabies.
It says the world was too hard before.
Now softness reigns—pliable, pliant, quietly smothering.
---
One of theirs returns.
She is safe. Smiling.
But her eyes don't blink the way they used to.
---
This is no philosophy—it's a takeover in disguise.
The Root Body does not govern—it absorbs.
It reshapes resistance into reverence.
---
Levi is not the answer.
He is the test.
He was brought close not to lead, but to merge.
---
There will be no war.
Just reunion.
Just correction. Just smiling faces where shouts used to live.
---
He turns to Seed. "Did I ever say yes to this?"
But he's already part of it.
Even doubt feels rehearsed now.
---
His brother, remembered wrong.
Their jokes, retold.
The past no longer belongs to him.
---
The Rootling child sings.
No one taught her this.
But somehow, the tune is known to all.
---
Levi howls.
Not in rage, but terror—
the terror of forgetting that you ever wanted anything else.
---
Seed and Levi lean in.
Not for love—but to anchor themselves to something real.
They don't touch. It's too dangerous.
---
The Root doesn't take over by force.
It waits. It wears you down.
And when you collapse, it blooms in your place.