Chapter 36: The Veil of Roots

The Grove Reborn

Aevum's canopy stretched like a cathedral of jade and gold, sunlight fracturing through leaves that hummed with ancient melodies. The sprout Nyra had become now towered at the grove's heart, its bark threaded with veins of crystalline light. Priam stood beneath it, his lattice scars shimmering faintly as he pressed a hand to the trunk. The Tree's pulse thrummed in his bones—steady, but strained.

"You're hiding something," he murmured.

The leaves rustled in reply, scattering petals that coalesced into Nyra's translucent form. Her voice echoed like wind chimes. "The roots grow deep. Too deep. They've found… them."*

Before he could ask, the ground trembled.

The Wandering Star

Seraphine's journey had led her beyond Erathia's scarred borders, into lands where the air tasted of salt and iron. The seeds in her pouch sprouted reluctantly here, their roots recoiling from soil steeped in old blood. She crouched beside a skeletal riverbed, scrubbing voidflower pollen from her boots, when the stranger appeared.

He rode a creature akin to a stag, its antlers forged of obsidian and its eyes twin voids. His face was hidden beneath a hood, but his voice was honeyed poison. "The Gardener of the Grove. How… quaint."

Seraphine's dagger found his throat in a breath. "Speak plainly, or lose the tongue beneath that hood."

He laughed, unmoved. "Your Tree is not the first to defy the Cycle. There were others. Better ones. They, too, fell."

A seed slipped from her pouch, sprouting thorns that lashed at his mount. The stag dissolved into smoke, and the stranger vanished, leaving a scroll etched with a single rune: Ūnora—the Forgotten City.

The Fractured Pact

The Verdant Covenant's peace unraveled at dawn. A child from the Ashen Remnant—her arm still bandaged from voidflower rot—stole into the grove, clutching a shard of Lucien's voidsteel. She plunged it into Aevum's roots, screaming, "You took my father!"

The Tree recoiled. Bark blackened, leaves shriveled, and the grove's song twisted into a dissonant wail. Priam sprinted through the chaos, his wings of bark and light unfurling as he wrested the shard free. The girl collapsed, her eyes wide with terror.

"Why?" Priam demanded, the shard searing his palm.

She pointed to the sprout. "It lied. The Tree isn't healing us. It's changing us!"

Behind her, Kael's followers advanced, their ivy crowns replaced by thorns. "The Tree demands justice," they chanted. "Blood for impurity!"

The Roots' Descent

Aevum's roots had pierced deeper than anyone realized. In the caverns below, they'd ensnared a tomb—a vault of black stone etched with the same Ūnora rune. Inside, petrified figures knelt in a circle, their hands fused around a dormant orb of void energy.

Discovery: The Forgotten City's last stand. A ritual to seal a nameless horror, now disrupted by Aevum's roots.

Nyra's voice hissed through Priam's mind. "They woke it. The Veil is thinning."

The orb cracked.

Seraphine's Gambit

The Forgotten City was a graveyard of spires, their peaks clawing at a starless sky. Seraphine navigated the ruins, the stranger's scroll guiding her to a plaza where a massive tree once stood—its skeleton now a scaffold for voidsteel vines.

"Ūnora's Heart," the stranger said, reappearing atop the scaffold. "It fed on cities. On gods. Your Tree is but a sapling in its shadow."

Seraphine ignited a seed, its roots lashing upward. "Why show me this?"

He caught a root, his hood falling to reveal Lucien's face—younger, unmarred, eyes blazing with voidlight. "Because you'll fail, just as I did."

The Veil's Price

Priam descended into the tomb, the void orb's energy corroding his scars. The petrified figures stirred, their voices a chorus of dread. "You cannot seal it twice. The Veil requires… a soul."

Nyra's sprout pulsed above, its light dimming. "Aevum is not strong enough," she whispered.

Priam pressed his palm to the orb. "Then I'll lend it my strength."

The lattice scars burned, siphoning his life into the Tree. Roots surged, sealing the orb—but the cost etched itself into his skin.

Priam's Sacrifice:

Life Force: 40% (irreversible).

Aevum's Stability: Restored, but tethered to his fading vitality.

The Stranger's Truth

In Ūnora, Lucien's echo watched Seraphine flee the crumbling city. "You'll run out of seeds, gardener. And then?"

She spat at his feet. "I'll plant you."

He smiled, dissolving. "We'll meet again… sister."

The revelation struck her mid-flight. Lucien was no shadow. He was Ūnora's last gardener.

Epilogue: The Unseen Blight

The grove healed, but Priam's hands trembled. His scars, now cracked and brittle, bled light. The child who'd stabbed Aevum knelt beside him, her bandages gone, her skin threaded with roots. "I'm sorry," she said.

"So am I," he replied.

Above, the sprout's leaves whispered secrets. Below, the tomb's horror slept—but not forever.

Seraphine returned at dusk, her pouch empty, her eyes haunted. She placed Lucien's scroll at Priam's feet. "We need to talk."

In the heartwood, Aevum's pulse quickened.