The mural bled through the night.
Not quickly. Just enough for the shrine floor to be wet by dawn.
Soren stood in front of it, silent, watching as the black-red stain crawled slowly down the wall. It had begun at the crown—right where the painted roots split in a jagged arc—and now it had reached the throat of the figure in the mural.
The figure that wore his face.
Cael paced behind him, boots crunching softly against old leaves. She hadn't spoken since the man had fallen. The cult leader. The one who called Soren "Rootking" and begged to serve.
Soren hadn't told her what happened after.
Not about the glyph.
Not about the choice.
Not about the first soul now bound beneath the Hollow Throne.
He wasn't ready to hear himself say it aloud.
Ash peered from his scarf, eye glassy, wings tucked in tight. He hadn't hissed since the ritual. He just… watched. Like he was waiting to see what Soren would do next.
Cael finally stopped.
"You know what this is now, don't you?"
Soren didn't answer.
"This isn't a cult," she continued. "It's a signal. A summoning ritual. You opened something in Hollowreach, and now the world's pulling itself toward you—like gravity but worse."
He finally spoke. "I didn't ask for that."
"You didn't have to." She nodded toward the mural. "It knows your name."
He looked at the crown on the painted figure. It was bark and bone, bleeding roots curling into the sky like cracks. Not a symbol of power.
A warning.
He turned.
"Let's move before it dries."
They left the shrine quietly. Ash curled tighter against him, and the mural behind them kept bleeding.
The path twisted down into a dying grove.
It was subtle at first—just the edges of leaves turned brittle, the moss too pale, the birds silent. But the farther they walked, the more it became obvious: this forest wasn't sick.
It was being forgotten.
Cael crouched beside a collapsed trunk, running a gloved hand over the bark. The rings inside were jagged, spiraling inward like glyphs trying to write themselves into the grain.
"It's the withering," she said. "Faster than it used to be."
Soren stood still.
The mark on his chest buzzed—not painfully, just… aware.
"This isn't natural rot," she went on. "It's rejection. The roots are trying to unremember what they once carried. And we're walking on it like it's still forest."
Soren eyed the dying trees. "How many shrines like the last one are there?"
"Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Not all finished. Not all loyal. But they're spreading the story."
"What story?"
"That you're the one who ends the forgetting."
Soren almost laughed. Almost.
He looked to the horizon where smoke curled faintly above the treeline—another fire, another echo-ritual burning through some prayer-stained town. It would be waiting for him. They all were. As if his name were a key they didn't know how to turn.
"Do they think I'm going to save the world?" he asked.
Cael stood. "No. They think the world already chose you. And now it's waiting to see what you'll do with it."
Soren didn't reply.
Ash chirped once—a rare sound. It meant warning. Or confusion. Maybe both.
Cael stepped ahead, drawing a blade etched with old runes. "There's a gathering up ahead. Shard-signature matches your resonance. If we're lucky, it's just believers."
"And if we're not?"
Cael didn't look back. "Then it's another bearer who heard the same call you did… and said yes louder."
They kept walking.
The ground began to crack.
And Soren realized, for the first time, that he was no longer walking on dirt—but on rootstone.
Old. Buried. Breathing.
They reached the ridge by dusk.
Below, a half-circle of figures moved in slow procession around a central pyre—hooded, chanting, their voices low and rhythmic. Smoke rose not from wood, but from a pile of broken glyph tablets and thorn-crowned skulls. The fire burned blue.
Cael cursed under her breath. "Not believers."
Soren nodded. "Bearers?"
"Or worse. Watch."
He crouched beside her in the brush. Ash slid silently from his coat and clung to a root behind them, eye glowing faintly. It was the clearest sign yet—Ash knew something was wrong.
At the center of the pyre stood a woman.
Tall. Wrapped in silver-root armor, mask half-shattered. The mark over her heart pulsed visibly even from this distance—bright gold with streaks of black.
A shardbearer.
But not like the last.
This one wasn't broken.
She was complete.
She lifted one arm toward the fire and spoke. Her voice carried without shouting.
"The Rootking has returned to the world. The old gods remember. The Hollow Tree grows again."
The crowd repeated the last phrase like a sacrament.
"The Hollow Tree grows again."
Cael's hand tightened on her hilt. "She's building an army."
Soren's mark pulsed. Not with heat. With something colder. Deeper. Like recognition.
The woman turned her head—straight toward him.
From a ridge. Through trees.
As if the shard in her chest whispered his location.
"He watches us now," she said to the crowd. "He weighs. He judges. And if we are worthy, we shall be rooted beneath him."
Soren's blood ran cold.
The followers dropped to their knees as one. Heads bowed. Arms spread.
"Root us. Crown us. Burn us."
The woman raised both arms. A crown of thorns bloomed above her, spinning.
Cael whispered, "We have to leave. Now."
But Soren didn't move.
He was no longer looking at the woman.
He was looking at the stone altar behind her.
On it was a carving. A throne. Surrounded by kneeling summons—each with his mark burned into their heads.
And in the center sat a man with no face.
Wearing a mask of roots.
Wearing his crown.