The descent began at dawn, when the forge's upper vents hissed cool for the first time in weeks.
Riku led the way through the faultline entrance sealed beneath the root-throne. The ground there had cracked in a slow spiral, as if something massive had twisted in its sleep beneath Blackridge. Ash had poured into the breach, forming soft dunes across the upper shelves of stone. No heat came from below. No wind. No natural scent. The Hollow, as Kael had named it, breathed only silence.
With him descended five: Kael, Sira, Tharn, Ilven, and Veit. Each bore twin lightstones fixed to their armor, and each carried weapons that had grown stranger by the day. Riku's own glaive was sheathed and silent, yet its core throbbed faintly whenever they stepped too near a curve of whisper-root.
By the third shelf down, the roots changed shape.
They stopped climbing and started arching. Thick tendrils like the ribs of some buried beast curved overhead and framed their path. Embedded in them were faint mineral veins, pulsing faint blue, neither alive nor dead—just aware. The way roots might be if they remembered.
Kael paused by a cluster of crystal spores at one bend. He bent to collect a sample, but the moment he touched them, they crumbled.
Then reformed.
He looked at Riku. "They don't want to be taken."
Riku nodded once. "Then we don't."
They continued down the slope into the first major chamber, where the floor opened into a basin of cracked, leathery earth. The ground here was unlike any surface above. Not stone. Not bark. Something else. Something tamed once, then left to dry.
Sira crouched low. Her fingers brushed the dust. "This isn't ash."
Kael knelt beside her. "No. It's spores. Dried. They fell upward."
Riku looked above.
The ceiling above the basin had grooves—natural drainage lines carved by fungal lattice. But no growth clung there now. Just dust. And cold.
In the center of the basin stood a shape. Not tall. Not imposing. A stump.
But not from a tree.
Tharn stepped forward first. "It's hollowed."
Riku joined him and peered into the top.
Inside the stump lay a flat disc—metallic, but flaking. A sheen like wet bone across its surface, impossible to identify. But what made Riku pause wasn't the artifact. It was the ring of claw marks scratched into the inner bark of the stump. Dozens, layered on top of each other. A struggle, maybe. Or a ritual.
Veit stepped forward and reached in to touch the disc. Riku caught his wrist before he could.
"No."
He stared at the artifact, waiting. Listening.
The silence stretched, deep and oppressive, until it began to feel less like silence and more like something holding its breath.
Then came the tremor.
A slight shift beneath their feet. Barely perceptible.
Kael's eyes narrowed. "That wasn't seismic."
"No," Riku murmured. "It was deliberate."
The disc inside the stump lit—just once—with a faint silver flicker. A rune, or a glyph, but not one Riku recognized. It looked like a crown with the bottom melted off, and it lasted only a moment before going dark.
No one spoke for a long while.
Ilven finally broke the silence. "Should we remove it?"
Riku shook his head. "It's not ours yet."
He turned to the wall beyond the basin.
Fungal vines ran across it in strands like veins. Near the top of the slope, three symbols had been carved into the bark in deep gouges. None were letters. They looked more like scars, or brands. Riku didn't touch them. He merely stared—then slowly reached for the medallion at his neck.
The one the system hadn't acknowledged in weeks.
He held it near the glyphs.
It began to vibrate.
Soft. Almost shy.
A connection not quite finished.
Sira stepped beside him. "They weren't kings."
Riku looked at her. "No?"
She nodded at the glyphs. "They were something older. Maybe not rulers. Maybe... tenders."
Caretakers. Cultivators.
He tucked the medallion away. "And something broke that role."
They left the basin in silence, retracing their steps deeper into the Hollow.
Behind them, after they disappeared into the curve of the roots, the disc inside the stump flickered once more.
This time, the symbol didn't fade.
It glowed steady.
And beneath it, unseen in the dark soil, the ground cracked inward.
Like something underneath had decided… to look up.