Smoke still curled from the canyon long after the facility died.
Kael sat on the ridge overlooking what had been Helix Gamma, his back pressed against a charred rock spire. The ash that coated the surrounding hills was fine and pale, disturbed only by the dark tendrils of root that still writhed deep beneath the surface. They weren't moving now, but he could feel them.
Waiting.
Eris sat a few meters away, her knees drawn up, her eyes closed. Her arm was wrapped in cloth now, the sleeve cut away to expose her shoulder. The rot had advanced. The veins pulsing from her brand now webbed across her chest like cracked porcelain, silver-black and angry.
She hadn't said much since the fight. Since Seth.
Neither had Kael.
He tightened his grip on Mercy, the sword laid across his lap. The cracks in the blade hadn't closed. If anything, they'd deepened. But it still pulsed faintly with life, with memory. It had screamed when Seth died—not in anger, but in mourning.
Or recognition.
Kael didn't know anymore. The line between those things blurred more every day.
A crunch of boots on gravel drew his attention. Veyra approached, a makeshift sling across his shoulder and dried blood crusted beneath one eye.
"You two alive?" he asked flatly.
"Physically," Eris muttered without opening her eyes.
Veyra gave a curt nod. "That's more than most can say. The node's dead. For now. The Garden's tendrils below Helix are severed."
"And Seth?" Kael asked.
Veyra's eyes flicked to him. "Nothing came up with the wreckage. No body. No signal. No regrowth."
"So he's dead."
Veyra didn't confirm. "Gone."
Kael looked down at Mercy. The blade's hum had been steady since they surfaced, as if holding its breath.
"He didn't die as a man," Kael said. "But he didn't become the King either."
"He became something in between," Eris murmured. "That's worse."
Veyra exhaled sharply. "We can't dwell. The Syndicate's going to retaliate hard. They won't care that the node was corrupt—they'll see an attack on their infrastructure. Solarae's council is already split down the middle. Some want to double down. Others are going quiet. And in the middle of it... the Garden's spreading."
"How far?" Kael asked.
Veyra's jaw clenched. "North ridge. Old cities along the spine. And the Ashlands."
Kael stood slowly, sliding Mercy back into its sheath.
"Then we don't wait."
Eris opened her eyes. "You're in no condition to fight, Kael."
"Neither are you."
"Exactly."
They stared at each other a long moment.
Veyra cleared his throat. "We're moving the Rootless base. Too exposed here. There's an abandoned stronghold two days east—one of the original Order training camps before it fell to the Purge. Still defensible."
Kael nodded. "We'll head there."
"I want you on the command team," Veyra added.
Kael blinked. "What?"
"You've seen more of the Garden than anyone alive. You've fought inside its root-nodes. You've killed its chosen. You carry a blade that remembers the first cut. People listen to that."
Kael looked at him hard. "I'm not your symbol."
"You are whether you like it or not."
Kael looked at Eris. She said nothing.
The march east took two days.
They traveled through the shadowed valleys between ruined cities, skirting areas where the soil had gone soft, where silver veins gleamed in the rock like veins beneath diseased skin. Veyra's scouts marked growth sites with bone flags, warning the living not to step there. Most obeyed.
Eris walked when she could, rode when she couldn't. Her condition was worsening. The veins were climbing her throat now, tracing toward her jaw like creeping frost. She didn't complain. Didn't falter. But Kael could see it in her eyes.
The stronghold came into view on the evening of the second day—a fortress built into the side of a mountain, half-swallowed by rock and time. The gates were intact, reinforced with Syndicate scrap and Order barricades. Inside, a single hall still stood, its roof patched with salvaged plating.
It wasn't much. But it was shelter.
Veyra took over immediately, assigning sections for wounded, prepping sentries, and digging out old stores of rations and water. Kael helped when asked. Mostly, he stayed near Eris.
That night, while the Rootless built fires beneath broken statues of long-dead generals, Kael found her on the battlements.
She was watching the stars.
"Your brand's glowing again," he said.
She didn't look away. "It hasn't stopped in days."
"Does it hurt?"
Eris finally looked at him.
"It's not the pain that gets me. It's the fact that I can feel it thinking."
Kael's chest tightened.
"I don't know if it's the Garden or the rot or whatever Draven put in me," she went on, "but it's trying to become something. To grow."
Kael sat beside her. "Then we cut it out."
"You think I haven't tried?"
He didn't answer.
She turned back to the sky. "I'm not scared of dying, Kael. I've done things that deserve it. But I'm scared of becoming something that kills you."
"You won't."
"You don't know that."
"I do."
Silence stretched between them.
Then, quietly: "You killed your brother."
Kael swallowed. "I didn't want to. But he was already gone."
She nodded slowly. "If it happens to me… promise me you won't hesitate."
Kael's grip on the stone tightened.
"No."
"Kael—"
"I'll find another way."
She didn't argue. Didn't push.
But the next morning, she was gone.
They found her two hours later, slumped in the old chapel buried beneath the stronghold's main hall. A Rootless scout had spotted flickering silver light from beneath the broken altar and raised the alarm.
Kael reached her first.
She was on her knees, hand pressed against the floor, eyes wide and unfocused.
"Eris," he said, dropping beside her.
She didn't respond.
Mercy screamed in his head.
The stone beneath her hand was cracked, roots pulsing faintly in the fissure. A dormant node. A minor one. Long buried—but not dead.
Kael grabbed her shoulders. "Eris!"
She blinked. Her eyes flickered silver, then blue, then cleared.
"I heard it," she whispered.
Kael's blood ran cold.
"Heard what?"
"It's trying to bloom. Here. Under us. The Garden knows where we are."
Veyra appeared at the chapel entrance, two scouts behind him.
"What the hell is happening?"
"There's a buried node," Kael said. "It's waking up."
Veyra cursed. "We need to evacuate."
"No," Eris said.
Veyra raised an eyebrow.
Kael looked at her. "You're not suggesting—"
She stood, trembling. "This is our chance. If we kill the root before it blooms, we can slow the spread. Maybe stop the eastward crawl entirely."
"You're not strong enough," Kael said.
"I don't care."
Veyra frowned. "There's a purification chamber below the chapel. Old Order tech. If we can lure the root's consciousness into it, we might be able to contain it. Burn it. But we'd need a conduit."
Eris met his eyes.
"No."
"It's already in me," she said softly. "I can draw it in. But I'll need someone to sever the link before it consumes me."
Kael shook his head. "There has to be another way."
"There isn't."
"I won't do it."
"Then I will," she snapped. "And I'll die for nothing. You want a choice? This is it."
Kael looked at her for a long time.
Then at Mercy.
The sword didn't hum.
It waited.
They set the ritual that night.
The purification chamber was a hollowed dome lined with cracked runes and old energy coils. Veyra's techs powered it with salvaged Aetherium cores, just enough to spark the ignition grid once.
Eris stood at the center, bare from the waist up, her brand glowing like a wildfire across her chest. Her skin was pale, veined with silver and red, and her breath came in ragged gasps.
Kael stood at the edge of the circle, Mercy in hand.
Eris looked at him. "When I say cut, you cut. Not before. Not after."
"I know."
She nodded.
Then she stepped onto the sigil and knelt.
The chamber responded instantly.
The air turned thick. The roots twitched in the walls. The floor cracked.
And then—it came.
The Garden.
It poured into her like smoke, like water, like fire. Her eyes flared silver. Her back arched. She screamed.
Kael stepped forward.
"Wait," Veyra warned.
Eris's body trembled violently. Her hands clawed at the stone.
Kael raised Mercy.
"Not yet," she gasped. "Almost—"
The ground erupted.
A tendril burst from beneath her, wrapping around her spine.
"NOW!" she screamed.
Kael moved.
The blade came down.
Clean.
Sharp.
Final.
The node howled.
Light exploded in the chamber, white and silver and red. The tendrils flailed. The root recoiled.
And then—it died.
Smoke filled the air.
Kael dropped to his knees beside her.
She was still breathing.
Barely.
Her skin had gone pale as snow. The veins had stopped moving. The brand… faded. A scar now.
She opened her eyes.
"Still here," she whispered.
He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.
Mercy pulsed once. Gentle.
Then went still.