The tunnel exhaled.
A gust of stagnant air rushed past Seraphina's face, carrying the scent of wet stone and something far older—the coppery tang of long-dried blood, the musk of roots grown through ancient bones. The silver-green glow pulsed weakly from below, illuminating the first few steps of a staircase carved not from rock, but from the living earth itself. Its walls rippled faintly, as though breathing.
Lysandra moved first, her bare feet silent on the earthen steps. The silver light in her eyes had dimmed to embers, but her movements were sure, as if pulled by an invisible thread. "It wants us to follow," she murmured, her voice layered with echoes not her own.
Riven hesitated at the threshold, his root-like hair lashing at the air. "No," he corrected grimly. "It wants you to follow." His earth-brown skin had taken on a grayish cast, the veins beneath standing out like cracks in parched soil. "I'm...not welcome here."
Seraphina tested the first step with her boot. The earth yielded slightly beneath her weight, then firmed, as if deciding to permit her passage. The transformed dagger hung heavy at her belt, its blade still thrumming with residual energy. "Why?"
A shudder ran through Riven's frame. "Because I drank from the same cup as my ancestors." His hollowed eyes flicked to the tunnel's depths. "And the roots remember."
The ground trembled beneath them—not the violent heaving from before, but something subtler. Insistent. Lysandra tilted her head, listening to whispers only she could hear. "We don't have long," she said. "The hunger is moving."
Seraphina took the first step. Then the next. The walls closed in around them, their surfaces unnervingly smooth in some places, grotesquely knotted in others. At irregular intervals, thick roots breached the earth, their ends blossoming into fleshy, flower-like growths that pulsed in time with the distant glow.
The air grew thicker with each descent, until every breath tasted of damp soil and something uncomfortably close to rotting fruit. Seraphina's fingers brushed one of the wall roots—
—and the vision struck like a falling stone:
*A young woman in royal robes kneeling before a gnarled root, her lips stained black. As she drank the oozing sap, her eyes rolled back in ecstasy—then horror. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream as the corruption took hold, twisting her form into something jagged and ravenous._
The vision shattered as Lysandra pulled her hand away. "Don't touch them," she warned. "They're not just memories—they're warnings."
The tunnel branched unexpectedly, the left path sloping downward into darkness, the right climbing toward a faint silver glow. The air from the right-hand path smelled incongruously fresh—green leaves and clean water.
A trap.
Seraphina knew it in her bones. Knew too that the real path lay downward, into the stench and the dark. She reached for her dagger—
—just as the walls moved.
Earthen hands erupted from the soil, grasping at their arms, their legs. Lysandra cried out as fingers of compacted dirt wrapped around her throat, her silvered eyes flaring bright. Riven roared, his own hands plunging into the tunnel floor, his root-hair lashing like whips.
The dagger came alive in Seraphina's grip, its blade singing as it sliced through the earthen restraints. Where it cut, the soil bled—thick, black fluid that hissed as it struck the ground.
From the depths below came a sound like a great inhalation.
Then—
A voice.
Not whispered. Not echoed.
Spoken.
"You're late."
The voice echoed through the tunnel, reverberating off the earthen walls with a resonance that made Seraphina's teeth ache. It was neither male nor female, but something ancient—a voice worn smooth by centuries of disuse, yet carrying an undercurrent of terrible power.
Lysandra went rigid beside her, the silver light in her eyes flaring so brightly it illuminated the panic etched across her face. "That's not possible," she whispered, her voice cracking. "She's gone. We saw her fade."
Riven staggered back a step, his root-like hair lashing violently. His hands, still buried in the tunnel floor up to the wrists, had taken on a gray, petrified appearance. "No," he rasped. "Not her." His hollow eyes met Seraphina's. "Something worse."
The earthen hands that had attacked them now crumbled to dust, retreating into the walls as if recalled. The sudden silence was more unnerving than the assault. Seraphina tightened her grip on the dagger, its blade humming in response to the unseen presence below.
"You know who that is," she said, keeping her voice low.
Riven wrenched his hands free from the soil with a wet, tearing sound. Dark fluid oozed from his fingertips—not blood, but something thicker, blacker. "A remnant," he said. "A piece of the First Gardener that refused to fade." His lips twisted into a grimace. "The part that liked the corruption."
A cold draft coiled up from the depths, carrying with it a whisper of movement—something shifting in the dark.
"Come, little saplings." The voice dripped with mock tenderness. "Let me taste how much of her remains in you."
Lysandra's breath hitched. She pressed a hand to her branching scar, which had begun to glisten with beads of silver fluid. "It's baiting us," she murmured.
Seraphina studied the two branching paths. The right-hand tunnel's false promise of clean air and light was obvious, but the left...the left descended into a darkness so complete it seemed to swallow the feeble glow from Lysandra's eyes. And yet, the voice had come from below.
"We don't have a choice," Seraphina said finally.
Riven let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "There's always a choice." He held up his blackened hands. "I can hold it off while you—"
"No." Lysandra's voice cut through his like a blade. She turned her eerie, glowing eyes on him. "You're coming with us. The roots want their due, and you're going to pay it."
A tense silence stretched between them. Riven's jaw worked, his hollow eyes flickering with something like fear. Finally, he gave a single, stiff nod.
The descent was slow, each step measured. The air grew thicker, clinging to their skin like damp gauze. Seraphina's dagger provided the only light now, its glow reflecting off the tunnel walls in erratic patterns that made the roots seem to twitch and writhe.
Then—
The tunnel opened abruptly into a cavern so vast its ceiling was lost in shadow. The walls were webbed with thick, blackened roots, their surfaces glistening with a viscous fluid that dripped steadily into shallow pools below. At the cavern's center stood a figure.
Not vine-woven like the Gardener they'd met above.
This one was formed of the roots themselves—gnarled and twisted into a grotesque parody of human shape. Its face was smooth, featureless save for a gaping mouth lined with thorns. When it spoke, the voice issued not just from its maw, but from the very roots surrounding them.
"Ah." The thing's head tilted at an unnatural angle. "The bloodline returns to its source."
Lysandra took an involuntary step forward, her scar weeping silver. "What are you?"
The root-creature's mouth stretched into a smile. "The first thirst. The first bite." It extended a limb, the roots composing it writhing like serpents. "And soon, the last."
Riven made a strangled sound. "It's the corruption," he said hoarsely. "The original sin given voice."
The creature's smile widened. "And you, little king, are the reason I woke."
Before anyone could react, the roots surged—not toward Lysandra or Seraphina, but toward Riven. They pierced his chest with a wet crunch, lifting him off his feet. Black fluid gushed from the wounds, splattering the cavern floor like ink.
Seraphina lunged, her dagger flashing—
—only to be intercepted by a wall of thrashing roots.
"Ah-ah," the creature chided. "This is between me and my wayward child."
Riven convulsed in its grasp, his root-hair lashing wildly. His hollow eyes met Seraphina's, and in them, she saw not fear, but grim resolve.
"Remember the dagger," he gasped. Then the roots pulled—
—and Riven came apart like rotten fruit.