Chapter 62: The Second Heartbeat
The roots of the Heart Tree, long believed dead and petrified, twitched.
Once.
Twice.
Like the first stretch after a long slumber.
The townspeople, still gathered in the square, didn't notice at first. They were too busy smiling too wide, too vacant. Their eyes glittered like glass marbles, reflecting the blue sky, but not seeing it.
Only one among them a child with ink-stained fingers looked down at the roots and whispered:
"It's awake."
Underground, Lyra felt it.
Her knees buckled, and she leaned into Kael. His arms were around her instantly, but her weight was wrong too light, as if part of her was no longer flesh, no longer here.
"Something's rising," she murmured. "Something that was never meant to hear our voices again."
Oran pressed a hand to the altar. His face had gone pale.
"There were always two seals. We bound the curse around the first. But the second"
"The second was buried deeper. Beneath even the roots."
Kael's voice cracked. "Then what did she just unbind?"
No one answered.
The earth did.
It groaned.
---
The chamber's ceiling cracked above them, dust falling like gray snow.
And then a sound echoed through the hollowed stone.
Not a scream.
A pulse.
Wet, thick. Rhythmic.
A second heartbeat.
Not Lyra's.
Not Kael's.
The heartbeat of something ancient.
Of something not yet shaped by language.
---
Above, the Heart Tree cracked down its center.
From within the hollow trunk, black sap oozed out and spilled across the roots.
The townspeople still didn't move.
Except for the child.
She reached into the sap.
And smiled.
"He remembers her now."
Back underground, Lyra's hand gripped Kael's chest, breath shallow.
"He's looking for me," she whispered. "He remembers my name."
"Not just me the first me. The one they killed to keep him sleeping."
Kael shook his head. "We'll stop it. Together."
But Oran's eyes had already dimmed.
He knew.
Some things… weren't meant to be stopped.
The chamber walls pulsed like lungs.
The runes Oran thought dead flared to life once more.
And a voice low, cold, older than time whispered from beneath the floor:
"She was my tongue.
You were my silence.
And now... you will all speak me again."