Smoke clung to Solarae like a second skin.
Kael stood at the lip of a shattered terrace overlooking the city's northern quarter. Buildings sagged beneath the weight of ash and invasive root. Light flickered in broken windows like fevered stars, and somewhere in the distance, something howled—not beast, not man, but something between. The Bloomed weren't hiding anymore.
Eris leaned against the archway behind him, breath shallow but even. She hadn't said much since Seth died. Since the grid fell. Her cloak was torn and her brand, though scarred over, had taken on a strange texture—like bark beneath skin.
They'd made it out of the power chamber just ahead of the collapse. Veyra and the others had taken a different route, radio silence since. If they were alive, they'd regroup later. If not...
"We bought time," Kael said quietly.
Eris looked out over the city. "Time's expensive. I hope we didn't pay for nothing."
The plaza below was different now. Where once there'd been a fountain and cracked marble, there was now a pulsing knot of roots and spines—grown up from the ground like a cancerous altar. Around it, figures in patchwork robes moved with purpose, not madness. They knelt. They prayed. They weren't corrupted.
They were faithful.
Kael's grip tightened on Mercy.
"Let's finish this."
The Bloomed let them approach.
No alarms. No ambush. Just silence, as if the city itself held its breath. A corridor of kneeling acolytes parted for them, heads bowed, lips stitched with vine-thread.
At the top of the altar's rise stood a figure.
Tall, spare, wrapped in bone-gray robes. A staff of fused vertebrae rested beside them. Their face was mostly shadow beneath the hood, but Kael knew the voice before it even spoke.
"Kael. Eris. Welcome home."
Eris's eyes narrowed. "That voice—"
"Ilaryn," Kael murmured.
Master Ilaryn. Once of the Black Hollow. A tactician. A scholar. A ghost.
Ilaryn stepped forward. She had changed. Not like Seth had—no monstrous limbs, no glowing eyes—but something deeper. Her skin was translucent in the light, veins of silver threading her neck and temples like ceremonial paint.
"I see your sword still listens," she said softly. "Even in the silence."
Kael said nothing.
Ilaryn gestured to the altar. At its center, rising from the earth like something grown and molded, sat a crown.
It was not metal. It was twisted sap, petrified into bone-white ridges and blackened thorns. Bits of teeth, or fingernail, gleamed from its inner roots. It pulsed faintly—alive.
"The Bloomed Crown," Ilaryn said. "It waited for Seth. But Seth was a seed. Not the tree."
Kael didn't move.
"You led the collapse of the node beneath the stronghold. You severed Draven's line. You slew the Rooted One before he matured. You bear the blade that remembers the first cut. Why fight a legacy that's already yours?"
Kael stared at the crown. Mercy didn't hum. Didn't scream. It was still.
Too still.
Eris stepped forward. "Why did you join them, Ilaryn?"
Ilaryn's eyes gleamed in the dark.
"Because the Order lied," she said. "They told us the Garden was a corruption. But it wasn't. It was the foundation. We were never meant to fight it. We were meant to become it."
Eris's mouth twisted. "You're insane."
"No," Ilaryn said calmly. "I'm awake."
Kael's chest tightened. The roots near the altar were humming now. He could feel them beneath his boots—moving, listening. And then something stirred in him.
Not thought.
Not Mercy.
His veins.
The old scars—where the Hollow King had marked him, where the rot had almost claimed him—throbbed once. Hard.
The crown pulsed in time.
Ilaryn saw it.
"You feel it," she said. "You don't want to, but it's there. The Garden doesn't want to enslave you. It wants to root you. To anchor you. And through you... to grow."
Kael took a step back. "I've seen what your roots do to cities. To minds."
"Yes," Ilaryn said. "But that's because they were planted without care. You could guide them. Control them."
Kael's breath caught. His vision blurred for just a moment—and in that blink, he saw it.
Himself.
Crowned.
Roots blooming from his shoulders like wings. Mercy no longer a sword, but a branch. Cities not burning—but bending. Kneeling.
Not war.
Order.
"Kael."
Eris's voice cut through the vision. He blinked. Her hand was on his arm. Tight. Grounding.
She looked at him—not angry, but afraid.
"That's not you," she said.
"I know," he breathed.
"Then say it."
Kael looked back at Ilaryn.
At the crown.
"I'm not your tree," he said.
Ilaryn's smile didn't waver. "Even trees need pruning."
From behind her robes, vines lashed outward. The altar erupted.
Kael moved first.
Mercy leapt to life in his hand, silver veins glowing like fire in the fog. Ilaryn's roots snapped toward him, but the blade cut through them like smoke. He didn't feel rage.
He felt clarity.
Eris ducked beneath a writhing tendril and drove her dagger into the base of the crown's altar. It cracked, bleeding silver sap. The acolytes began to scream—but not in pain. In rapture.
Kael spun toward Ilaryn. "You could have led us."
"I still will," she said. "Even in death."
They clashed.
Ilaryn's staff was no mere wood—it shifted, split into jagged bone spears, wrapped in sentient tendrils. She moved with inhuman speed, her body no longer bound by flesh. But Kael had learned.
He cut low. Blocked high. Moved not where she was, but where her roots would spread.
Mercy guided his hand, but didn't speak.
Not this time.
Eris struck the altar again. The crown shattered.
Ilaryn screamed.
Her form unraveled—roots ripping from her back, her arms, her mouth. She tried to hold together, but the moment the crown broke, her tether was gone.
Kael drove Mercy into her heart.
The plaza went still.
The acolytes collapsed, one by one, as if strings had been cut. The roots receded, curling into the cracks of the stone. And the altar burned—slowly, like wood soaked in sorrow.
Kael stood over the ashes of the Bloomed Crown, breath shaking.
Eris limped to his side.
"You didn't take it," she said.
He shook his head. "I wanted to. Just for a second."
"I know."
He looked at her.
"You would've stopped me."
She didn't smile. "No. I would've killed you."
Kael laughed once. It hurt. But it was real.
Later, as the sun rose over the ruined skyline, Mercy spoke again.
Not with words.
With memory.
A flash. A vision. A forest before the rot. A blade buried in clean soil. A hand refusing the crown.
And a whisper:
"This time... it may hold."