Reality screamed. The gears cracked. The rust shattered. The door split down the middle and fell inward with a crash that shook the entire platform.
Beyond lay the heart of the Clockwork Arboretum.
The chamber was cathedral-vast, its walls formed of living trees wrapped around towering machinery. Gears the size of houses rotated slowly overhead, connected by vines thick enough to walk on. Brass flowers bloomed from every surface, their petals reflecting light from sap that dripped like liquid gold from the ceiling.
And at the center of it all stood the Botanical Engine.
It was a tree. A tree the size of a building, its trunk made of twisted wood and corroded metal fused together into something that shouldn't have been alive but clearly was. Gears spun within its bark, visible through gaps in the biological material. Its branches reached out in every direction, connecting to every vine, every flower, every piece of vegetation in the Arboretum.
It was beautiful.
