Chapter 77
The fig tree had always stood quietly—its twisted roots drinking deep from soil soaked in centuries of blood and memory.
But tonight… it pulsed.
Not with fire.Not with void.
With something else.
Kael didn't feel it at first.Not on the surface.
But deep in his bones, where flame once devoured everything, a new warmth stirred.
Gentle. Curious. Unshaped.
Like magic itself was trying to speak for the first time.
Eliendara paced the garden path barefoot, staring at the sky.
"It's too quiet," she muttered.
Kael tilted his head. "You want a war?"
"I want meaning. This stillness doesn't feel real."
Kael crouched at the base of the tree, brushing soil with his fingers.
"What if meaning isn't loud?"
He reached into the roots—just to feel.
And the second his fingers brushed a specific knot of earth…
The world shifted.
Light rippled through the soil like ink in water.Silver. Green.Alive.
Eliendara froze as the tree itself moved—slow, creaking, not unnaturally… but like something waking up after eons of slumber.
Kael drew his hand back—but it was too late.
A mark bloomed across his wrist. Not flame. Not silver. Not divine.
Living magic.
Eliendara ran to him. "What did you just do?"
He looked up at her, dazed.
"I think I just… listened."
The roots split, not destructively—but purposefully.
And beneath the tree, where no chamber should have existed, a stairway of woven stone revealed itself.
Not built.
Grown.
Kael stood.
And from the air itself came a whisper—not threatening, not ancient…
New.
"Would you like to learn a world that never needed gods?"
They stared into the stairwell.
Kael took her hand.
"Do we follow?"
Eliendara smiled. "We always do."
They descended.
And the deeper they went, the more the world above faded—until all that remained was a heartbeat in the roots of the earth.
A place untouched by fire.
Untouched by war.
But brimming with something pure.
Not chaos.Not silence.
Creation.
🔮 Next Chapter Preview – Chapter 78: The Garden That Remembered Nothing
Beneath the fig tree lies a hidden sanctuary—a place where even memories are strangers.
As Kael and Eliendara explore its depths,they discover magic in its rawest form…
But something is watching from the garden's edge.And it doesn't remember who it used to be.