The air thinned as they neared the Rootspire.
Every step sank deeper into loam that pulsed beneath their feet. Trees throbbed with breathless murmurs. Riven moved with sword half-drawn, eyes narrowed and flicking from shadow to shadow. Kaelen said nothing, but their magic hissed faintly at their fingertips, already tasting whatever poison seeped from the tower ahead. Wren had gone quiet again. Even he seemed unsure now.
And Joe. Joe felt the storm stir with a sick, coiling hunger.
The Rootspire didn't rise from the forest floor. It bent the world around it. From a distance, it had looked like a colossal, gnarled tree. But up close, the lines blurred. The bark was too slick, the branches too deliberate. Veins of black glass pulsed beneath the surface, and the entire structure leaned toward them as if listening. Or preparing to speak.
"Don't look directly at it too long," Kaelen muttered without turning. "It notices."
Wren stopped walking. "It already noticed us. It's deciding whether we're worth keeping."
Joe's hand sparked involuntarily. "What does that mean?"
He looked at Joe for a long moment, then shrugged.
"You'll find out."
They pressed forward.
The base of the Rootspire opened like a wound, slick and pulsing, with roots curved into a half-circle archway. As they stepped inside, the air thickened. Cold. Wet. Familiar. The walls dripped with memory. The scent of scorched pavement and ozone bled into the chamber like fog.
Joe flinched.
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
Fragment Detected: Remnant Designation [Echo of the Self]
Authorizing Manifestation Protocol.
Welcome back, Joe.
A flicker passed across the space. A shimmer, not unlike heat distortion. Then it formed.
Himself.
Or what had once been.
Same height. Same build. But something was wrong. Its skin was too pale, like drowned flesh. The eyes were hollow but lit from within by pale lightning. The mouth twitched unnaturally wide, splitting as it smiled.
"Storm boy," it whispered.
Joe froze.
The others didn't speak. Riven's sword had gone slack. Wren's mouth moved as if trying to form words, but no sound came. Kaelen's expression was unreadable, as though this had been expected.
The thing that wore Joe's face stepped forward. The storm in Joe's chest crackled, but the creature laughed.
"You think you're chosen," it said. "But you're just debris. A loose shard rattling inside something older. I remember everything you try to forget."
Joe stepped back. The chamber did not allow space.
"You think this world needs you? It needs you like a wound needs salt. You brought ruin the moment you arrived. How many bodies will you crawl over before you realize it's your weight breaking the spine of this place?"
The words hit harder than claws. They weren't lies. They were truths, warped and sharpened.
"You're not real," Joe muttered. "You're just the Timber. A projection. A trick."
"I'm the part you buried," it said. "I'm the hand you didn't reach for. I'm the last breath you stole when you lived and others died. I'm the silence after the scream."
It lunged.
Joe raised his arm too late. The creature slammed him to the ground. His back hit pulsing roots. Static screamed in his ears. He fought, fists sparking, power crackling through the chamber, but the other Joe matched him blow for blow. It wasn't a fight. It was a reflection. It knew his moves. It knew his fears.
Lightning exploded between them. The others were lost in shadow, shapes fading in and out like echoes in fog.
Then something shifted.
The Rootspire groaned.
A sound deeper than thunder rolled across the walls. It did not come from Joe or the creature. It came from above. From inside.
The creature froze mid-blow and turned its head toward the ceiling.
"No," it whispered. "Not yet. He's not ready."
The wall behind Joe split open.
Not cracked. Peeled, like skin from fruit. An eye opened in the ceiling, lidless and unblinking. It was not physical. It was not meant for light. It was a thought given form. It pulsed once.
And the creature vanished.
Joe lay gasping. The storm in him screamed now, not in rage, but in fear.
Kaelen appeared beside him and pulled him to his feet.
"What the hell was that?" Joe asked, voice raw.
Wren's eyes did not meet his. "The Rootspire showed mercy."
"That was mercy?"
Kaelen looked toward the open eye above, then back at Joe.
"No," they said. "That was curiosity."
The eye closed. The wall sealed as if it had never opened. The Rootspire fell silent again.
Its presence remained.
Far above, in a place beyond the Rootspire's reach, something watched.
Not through branches or roots, but through meaning. Through the tension in Joe's breath. Through the smell of ozone that no longer left his skin. Through the static stitched into his bones.
A flicker of light twisted in the void. Then a voice, quiet and smooth, spoke from shadow.
"He is different now."
The speaker stood in a room that wasn't a room, beside a pool that shimmered with reflections of things that hadn't happened yet. The flame mage wore robes that fluttered without wind. Firelight coiled around his fingers, alive and curious.
Beside him, hunched and skeletal, stood a smaller figure draped in bone-wrapped cloth.
"He was supposed to break," the smaller one said.
The flame mage watched the image of Joe, now standing beneath the Rootspire with his allies.
"He still might," he answered.
His companion tilted their head. "But he has not."
"No," said the flame mage. "And that is... troubling."
The fire around his fingers dimmed. The pool of visions shifted, displaying not Joe, but the Rootspire itself, still writhing in slow silence.
"The eye blinked," the flame mage said. "It recognized him."
"That should not be possible."
"I agree."
The pool went still.
They stood in silence, watching nothing.
And beneath the Timber, Joe clenched his fist. The storm obeyed.