The argument

**Kelly Thompson's POV**

The sapling isn’t just a tree—it’s a *mirror*.

Its obsidian bark reflects my face, twisted into the Rootmother’s cruel smile. The emerald leaves whisper with my voice, taunting, coaxing. The survivors circle it, their weapons trembling. Some beg me to burn it. Others kneel, calling it a miracle. Ravel stands apart, her gaze locked on the jagged horizon where the fracture once bled.

“We need to destroy it,” she says, her voice raw. “Before it infects someone else.”

But the sapling’s roots have already sunk deep, threading into the soil like veins. When I step closer, the ground hums, and the scar on my chest—the Primal Verse’s sigil—pulses in time with its rhythm. *Same heartbeat. Same hunger.*

**“You can’t kill me,”** the sapling croons. **“I’m your reckoning, Kelly. The root and the storm.”**

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**The First Blight**

By dawn, the wasteland begins to *change*.