Part 1: Return to the Godbone
Holgaris Forest was quiet again.
But not the same quiet.
This time it was post-bloom silence. Not rest.
Exhaustion.
The trees had begun to curl inward. The vines hung limp, some gray at the edges, as if choked. The sky above seemed dimmer—not with weather, but with weight.
Yuji walked ahead.
No words.
His Fertility aura was muted—kept drawn in, held back by will. Ever since Ashroot Vale, he could feel it pulsing differently.
More responsive.
Less tame.
Sylvia walked beside him, bow unslung. Amelia hummed softly as she strolled, but didn't smile. Sacha's fingers twitched near her axe handle. Siora had gone pale the moment the ribcage came into view.
And then they saw it.
The cathedral inside the corpse.
It was still there.
But wrong.
The veil of flesh at the tunnel's entrance had withered and cracked, hanging in brittle strips like old parchment. The runes around the entrance no longer pulsed.
The light inside was gone.
They descended in silence.
Each step deeper felt like a lie remembered.
The once-glowing glyphs along the bone walls were burned out, smeared black like candle soot. The monks were gone.
No blood.
No bodies.
No traces.
Just absence.
And in the central chamber where the incubator had once floated—cradled by bone tendrils and prayer—there was nothing.
Just a cracked socket in the marrow-floor, the size of a man lying in wait.
Yuji crouched and touched the rim.
Warm.
Still.
Alive.
But whatever had been here—
Had moved.
Or had been moved.
Siora's voice was low. "This place is collapsing. The magic holding it together—it's bleeding out."
Sylvia looked up. "Then we're not just chasing them."
"We're behind," Amelia finished. "Again."
Yuji stood slowly.
His aura pulsed once.
And somewhere deeper in the corpse, beneath marrow and memory—
Something pulsed back.
Part 2: The Breach
They followed the pulse.
It wasn't magic.
It was resonance—a kind of breathless rhythm, tugging at Yuji's spine, whispering through the cracks in the godbone. No visible path marked the way.
Only the decay trail.
Siora spotted it first—fine black veins threading through the walls, curving away from the heart chamber, upward toward the head.
Toward the skull.
Yuji moved first.
The tunnel curved through ancient cartilage, then narrowed into a spiral barely wide enough to pass through sideways. Sacha grunted as she squeezed through. Sylvia moved like shadow. Amelia whispered curses in dead languages.
They emerged into a hollow.
It had no door.
No altar.
No design.
Just raw divine skull—hollowed and webbed with something wrong.
Black flowers bloomed along the walls, petals curled inward, dripping spores.
And in the center of the chamber—
A scar.
Like something had grown out from the marrow.
Then peeled free.
Siora knelt beside it. "This is where they moved it."
Amelia ran her fingers along the wall. "Not carried. Not lifted. It detached itself."
Yuji stepped forward.
The air was different here.
His magic didn't respond like usual.
It didn't bloom.
It didn't resist.
It simply waited.
Then the light around him bent—
And Priapus appeared.
Not glowing.
Not radiant.
Flickering.
Weaker than Yuji had ever seen him.
"Kael," he said, voice strained. "You shouldn't have come here."
Yuji stared. "Why are you afraid?"
Priapus stepped forward. His presence barely moved the air.
"This isn't death anymore," he said. "This is counter-life. It's not rot. It's not decay. It's something new."
Sacha gripped her weapon. "Can we destroy it?"
Priapus shook his head. "No. Not now. Not with what you've become."
Yuji's eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?"
But Priapus looked past him.
Toward the scar.
And whispered:
"It's not the fragment that's learning from you.
It's the world."
Then he vanished.