Chapter 8 – The Memory Seed

Ashroot breathed differently than anywhere Yuzu had ever known. The air didn't hum with life like Verdurosa. It whispered. It creaked. It remembered.

The morning after his dream of the Burned Gardener, Yuzu followed Mira through the winding cliff paths deeper into the village. Here, the buildings were older — less carved and more grown, shaped over time by coaxed roots and living stone. None of the villagers made eye contact. But they noticed him. He could feel it in the strange silences that followed their steps.

They stopped in front of a domed structure of mossbrick and vineglass.

"This is the Archive," Mira said. "But not the kind the Council keeps."

Yuzu hesitated. "Is it safe?"

"No," she replied. "But it's true."

Inside, the air was cool and thick with a smell like dried citrus peels and burnt resin. Shelves lined the walls, not with books, but with seedpods. Each one glowed faintly, labeled with a single sigil carved into its surface.

"Memory Seeds," Mira said. "Ashroot doesn't write history. We grow it."

A figure stepped from the shadows — a man in a shawl made of woven petals, with a single apricot Spirit hovering over his shoulder, rotted and translucent.

"You're the boy," the man said. "The Harvester reborn."

Yuzu stiffened. "I'm just… trying to survive."

The man tilted his head. "That's what they all say. Before the fruit changes them."

He walked to one of the shelves and picked a seed.

"This one's old," he said, tossing it lightly to Yuzu. "The last one to touch a Primordial. Before you."

Yuzu turned the pod over in his hands. It was warm. Not in a comforting way — more like something watching him from the inside.

"Bite it," the man said.

Yuzu blinked. "Will it… hurt?"

Mira snorted. "Everything real does."

He bit.

The world cracked.

He wasn't in the Archive anymore. He stood in a field of ash, beneath a sky swirling with stormfruit clouds. A girl knelt before a burning tree, her mouth bleeding purple. She looked up at Yuzu — no, through him — and screamed a name he didn't know.

He saw the Council's golden blades.

The Harvesters in black robes.

The tree split in two.

And then…

A pit.

Dark.

Filled with discarded sigils, broken spirits crying without voices. He floated above them, unable to look away.

Then the tree appeared.

His tree.

But it had changed — its bark was cracked, bleeding flavor, and the roots pulsed like veins.

"You're not the first," a voice echoed. "But you might be the last."

Yuzu dropped the seed. He was back in the Archive, gasping. The man watched without pity.

"Memory is a wound," the man said. "Don't collect seeds unless you're ready to bleed."

Yuzu stared at the pod on the ground. It was black now. Spent.

"I saw… them. The Council. Killing someone like me."

Mira nodded. "That's what they do. To anything they can't name."

The man stepped closer. "You think they don't know? The moment the Bloomstone failed you, they marked you. Watched you. Hoping you'd fade away like flavorless rind."

"But I didn't," Yuzu whispered.

"No," the man agreed. "You bloomed where they couldn't see."

Yuzu's sigil pulsed beneath his sleeve.

Outside, thunder rumbled.

Mira placed a hand on his shoulder. "You asked what Ashroot remembers? It remembers every child the Garden threw away. Every seed that didn't fit their perfect rows."

Yuzu's voice was a whisper. "So what now?"

The man smiled, not kindly. "Now? You learn what it means to grow wild."

That evening, Mira led him to the edge of the village, where a half-crumbled watchtower leaned against the cliff like a tired sentinel. From its top, he could see far across the Thornlands — jagged forests, cracked riverbeds, clouds shaped like dying fruit.

She sat beside him.

"I never thanked you," she said quietly.

"For what?"

"For not turning me in."

Yuzu shrugged. "I'm not one of them."

"No," she said. "You're something worse."

He looked over sharply.

She smiled. "You're something new."

They sat in silence after that, the sky deepening into bruise-colored dusk.

Yuzu summoned his orchard.

It responded slowly, roots yawning like something waking from a long nap. The tree was taller now, its leaves glassier. More icons floated around it.

One blinked softly.

[Skill Gained: Root Echo – Rank F]Absorb a memory imprint from a nearby sigil. Duration: 30 seconds. Accuracy: Unstable.

Yuzu stared at it.

"Memory is a wound," the man had said.

He clenched his hand.

Good.

He was ready to bleed.