The Root-Spire did not welcome them.
It recognized them.
And in recognition, it wept.
As Kael and Lyra stepped beyond the threshold, the wound closed behind them, sealing with a whisper like the hush of a blade drawn too slowly. Inside, there was no architecture—only sensation. Smells of forgotten births, echoes of unspoken regrets, and gravity that reversed every few heartbeats. The Spire had no center, because it was center—of Orion's thought, of the multiverse's new genesis, of something older.
Lyra lit a sigil to stabilize the space, but the flame turned to dust before blooming.
Kael's blade screamed in its scabbard, not from threat—but reverence.
"This place…" he said, voice low. "It's alive."
"No," Lyra corrected. "It's remembering."
Every wall pulsed with memory. They walked through fields of phantom voices—Orion's, twisted into countless forms. A version of him who never left the first garden. Another who ruled a sunless realm as a tyrant made of roots. A child Orion. An Orion who died to save Lyra. An Orion who never met them at all.
Each fragment a branch.
Each branch still growing.
"We're inside his dreaming," Lyra whispered.
But it was Kael who saw it first—the core.
They arrived at the heart of the Spire, where no light reached. There, the Sovereign Seed sat upon a throne not carved, but grown from timelines abandoned. His form no longer resembled a man. Limbs like woven bark and memory. Eyes like voidfruit devouring stars. From his spine grew an orchard of impossible futures, their fruit twitching with unborn lives.
He spoke with no mouth.
"Did you come to harvest me?"
Kael stepped forward, rage simmering. "We came to bring you back."
"You mistake me for a thing that left," said the Sovereign.
A moment passed. Or a hundred years.
Lyra stepped beside Kael. "You're unraveling everything. You're replacing what was with… with experiments."
"I'm offering alternatives," the Sovereign murmured. "The multiverse was rotting. I am the root-rot turned seed. I do not preserve. I transform."
Kael drew his blade.
"I don't care what you think you've become. If you've forgotten who we are—who you were—then I'll carve it back into you."
But the Sovereign did not resist.
He only raised a hand.
And Kael vanished.
No sound. No warning.
Lyra screamed his name.
The Sovereign's voice filled the space, sad and soft. "He is not harmed. Just… misplaced. You cannot threaten what no longer defines itself by opposition."
Lyra trembled. "Then what do you define yourself by now?"
The throne of roots twisted.
The Sovereign stood.
"I am no longer Orion. I am the question the multiverse must answer. I am the sprout in your throat when you fear you've forgotten someone. I am the bloom at the edge of the end."
He walked toward her. Each step reversed death in the ground—but planted chaos instead.
"And I ask you now, Lyra of the Burning Sigils: will you grow with me… or be pruned?"
She didn't answer.
Not yet.
Instead, she reached into her coat and pressed her hand against the last echo Orion had given her—a knot of stillbirth, shaped like a tear, pulsing with refusal.
And for the first time…
The Sovereign flinched.