CHAPTER 41: "Ash in the Veins"
---
Scene 1: Aftershock
The Vault is a ruin of memory. Root-flesh dangles from broken architecture. Circuits twitch like dying nerves. Smoke rises, thick and silent, as if mourning.
Jiro walks around the wreckage—ash everywhere. Catastrophy well-known. Reen's scream still haunts the steel.
---
Scene 2: Jiro & Gift – The Confrontation
Outside, the wind cuts. Gift walks alone until he sees them—Jiro, Irogi, Florin. Shadows reformed from old nightmares.
Florin moves to kill. Jiro stops her. Not yet.
Jiro: "The Root Avatar dies first. Then you."
Gift stuns them—he gives Jiro the lair's location. A pause. The sky holds its breath.
Jiro (smirks) : "I'll see you again, Gift. I'm only keeping you alive because when i was human you voted to keep me alive."
---
Scene 3: Descent
The trio descends into the lair's final chamber—roots of crystal glass, fractal branches pulsing with ancient code. The air is wrong here. Symbols shift beneath the skin of the walls.
The air is haunting. It sends chills down their spines.
---
Scene 4: The Conversation
Elsewhere—
Gift, Jakku, Matthew, Maiku.
A sudden snap— a vision
The Bloom Mind opens again.
Reen appears, dual-natured, dual consciousness: part warmth, part loving, familiar their friend—Reen ; one part vast, her voice layered like echo through water—Crown.
The warm consciousness speaks
She apologizes. Breaks. Hugs them through dreamlight.
Reen : "I'm still in here. Just buried. Imprisoned. Please… don't forget who I was."
The vision ends.
Silence. Then shared understanding. They saw it. All of them. They're determined to free her.
---
Scene 5: Verdict Protocol Activated
Back in the lair—
Jiro nods. Florin moves, planting biotech charges like seeds of apocalypse.
He opens his eye—an eye blacker than the color black. Erebus awakens.
FLASHBACK:
Jiro devouring a Spored Bloomed corpse—it's power cracking into his DNA, merging.
He was suppose to be taken by control—but he's more dominant.
His DNA broke the Bloom and enhanced himself making an eye we call Erebus.
The Lair starts to deteriorate.
Jiro orders Irogi to hack into the systems to steal all their data.
But... the systems hesitate.
They listen to Crown and no one else.
---
Scene 6: Explosion and Deterioration
Boom.
50% of the lair obliterated. 15%—rotted, collapsing inward.
In the shuddering dark, Crown watches.
The Root Avatar gestures. Something is… wrong.
---
Scene 7: The Final Blow
Florin unleashes E6 950. A bomb forged for extinction.
The lair goes nova. Light swallows everything.
Root Avatar leaps to kill—
But Jiro punches through the blast.
Whip meets fist. Flame meets blood. The real fight begins.
---
Scene 8: The Withered King vs The Root Avatar
The Root Avatar conjures a Centaur—grown from root , flesh and madness.
The Centaur leaps and kicks Jiro, he coughs up blood.
Jiro(surprised) : "How the hell did you not Wither away."
Finally Jiro attacks. He punches the Centaur three times in the face and then he uses it—Erebus.
He withers it's leg away and then rips it's head out.
The Root Avatar retaliates. Whips dance. Jiro is flayed in strips, his body a canvas of red.
He strikes again. Erebus touches the Avatar—
Only partial decay.
The Root Avatar (laughs): "Even with the Eye… you're just an abnormal Bloomed One choking on power."
Crown watches. Amused. Smirking.
---
Scene 9: Training Under Pressure
Meanwhile—
Jakku, Gift, Maiku, Matthew.
Six hours of relentless training. No rest. No food. No breath.
Bodies break. Spirits bend.
But no one stops.
Not now.
Not after what she said.
---
Scene 10: Escape & Echo
Jiro roars—
Then—
SLASH!
Florin severs the Root Avatar's hand, grabs Jiro mid-bleedout.
She nods to Irogi. Just as the Root Avatar is about catch them.
Irogi moves fast. The Avatar lunges—
BOOM!
Hot coal rains down. Steam screams.
The trio escapes into the burning dark.
Mission complete.
Barely.
But complete.
Final Line :
The Root Avatar stands in the ash, laughing through the blood.
"Run, little Withered King. I'll see you again—when the roots are at your throat."
Narrator's Voice:
Chapter 41: "Ash in the Veins" — the title itself bleeds with meaning. This was no ordinary battle. This was a reckoning.
The Vault, once a crown jewel of ancient secrets, is now a broken cathedral of loss. Jiro walks its ruins with ash in his breath and vengeance in his heart. Every step he takes echoes a scream that still hasn't faded—Reen's scream. Memory has teeth, and it bites hard here.
Outside, the world hasn't healed. The wind still cuts, and old ghosts still walk. Gift dares to face them—Jiro, Irogi, Florin. But it's not time for his reckoning… not yet. A choice is made, a truth revealed. And for a brief moment, the sky seems to pause in judgment.
Then begins the descent.
The lair is no lair—it is a wound in the world, pulsing with code, blood, and buried intelligence. They are not just walking into enemy territory. They are walking into the breath of a god.
Elsewhere, friends see her again—Reen. Not whole, not free. But still there. Still her. Trapped behind the Crown's façade. And suddenly, every heartbeat, every breath, every drop of sweat in training becomes a promise: We will get her back.
In the lair, apocalypse is sown like seeds. Jiro's power—born from blasphemy, from devouring what should not be consumed—awakens. Erebus: a new god-eye, a curse, a weapon. Yet, even Erebus has limits. The systems resist. The Crown commands.
And then—eruption.
Glass and flame, decay and death. 65% of the lair becomes ruin in seconds. Amidst the destruction, the Root Avatar rises. A nightmare crowned in flesh and madness. Its centaur strikes, but Jiro does not fall. He bleeds, yes—but he endures.
They trade blows like titans. Erebus brings decay. The Avatar mocks, but the fight is real now—no visions, no delays. Just pain, power, and pure survival.
Meanwhile, the others break themselves to rebuild. Six hours of torment, driven by the weight of her voice—the truth of Reen. Each second a vow. Each wound a scream of resistance.
Back in the ruins, the escape is violent. Desperate. Beautiful.
And when the ash settles, when the blood stops singing for a moment, the Root Avatar still stands. Laughing.
Because war isn't over. No—
This was just the inhale.
And soon, the world will feel the exhale.