The scream that tore from the sky was not sound, but absence—a void so complete it left Seraphina's ears ringing with silence. The dark tendril recoiled, its eye-like nodes blinking erratically before bursting like overripe fruit. Black rain fell across the courtyard, steaming where it struck Lysandra's radiant form.
Her father—the thing wearing his face—clutched at his disintegrating features. "You don't understand what you've done," he rasped, his voice crumbling like dry leaves. "The roots need the hunger. Without it—"
Lysandra moved.
Not with the grace of her human form, but with the inevitability of a landslide. Her blade-arm swept through the air, leaving trails of silver fire that hung suspended like cobwebs. When it struck her father's chest, there was no impact—only stillness.
Then understanding.
His stolen form dissolved, revealing the truth beneath—not corruption, but grief. The twisted roots composing his body untangled, their blackened surfaces sloughing away to reveal healthy wood beneath. The last to fade were his eyes—her father's eyes—now clear and blue and terrified.
"Lysandra," he whispered with human lips. Then he was gone, his essence scattering into the wind like pollen.
The silence that followed was heavier than any scream.
Riven collapsed onto his hands and knees, his corrupted roots snapping off like dead branches. Golden sap oozed from the breaks, hissing where it struck the ground. "It was never the hunger," he gasped. "It was the fear of hunger. The roots...they remembered the pain."
Seraphina stumbled forward, her body aching with residual energy from the dagger's power. The blade itself was gone, fully absorbed into Lysandra's transformed arm. "Then what do we do now?"
The answer came from an unexpected source.
The ground between them breathed.
A single shoot pushed through the cracked stones, its tender leaves unfurling with impossible speed. As they watched, it grew—not into a root or vine, but a sapling, its slender trunk rising until it stood eye-level with Seraphina. Then it blossomed, its petals forming a face she recognised instantly.
The First Gardener.
But not as they'd seen her before, this face was younger, softer—the Gardener as she'd been before the fall. When she spoke, her voice was the whisper of leaves in spring.
"You've done what we could not," she said. "Given the roots, new memories to grow on."
Lysandra's radiant form flickered. "At what cost?"
The Gardener's petal-lips curved in a smile both beautiful and sad. "The same price all gardeners pay, little sapling. Your first harvest."
The sapling dissolved into golden dust, carried away on a wind that smelled of rain and fresh-turned earth. Where its roots had been, something gleamed in the soil—
A seed.
Not silver. Not black.
But gold.
Riven reached for it with trembling fingers. "This changes everything," he breathed.
Above them, the clouds began to break.
The golden seed pulsed in Riven's palm like a tiny heartbeat, its warm light casting long shadows across the broken courtyard. Seraphina watched as the glow reflected in his golden eyes—eyes that had once been hollow, now brimming with something dangerously close to hope.
Lysandra's transformed body flickered like a guttering candle, her radiant form unstable. The dagger had become one with her, its blade now an extension of her right arm, the metal and wood fused seamlessly into her flesh. She flexed her fingers, and the blade responded, its edge humming with barely restrained power. "We need to plant it," she said, her voice layered with the whispers of the roots.
The ground trembled beneath them, not in warning, but in anticipation. The remaining roots—those that had resisted the corruption—twined together, forming a loose circle in the centre of the courtyard. The earth within the ring was dark and rich, untouched by the battle that had raged around it.
Seraphina knelt, pressing her palms into the soil. It was warm, as if something beneath still slumbered, waiting to wake. "Here," she murmured. "Where the old throne once stood."
Riven hesitated, his gaze flicking to Lysandra. "Are you sure? Once this is done, there's no going back."
Lysandra's silvered eyes burned brighter. "There never was."
With a slow exhale, Riven placed the seed into the waiting earth. The moment it left his fingers, the ground shuddered. A ripple spread outward, the soil darkening to near-black as tiny rootlets burst forth, weaving an intricate lattice across the surface. The air filled with the scent of blooming orchards and summer rain—a fragrance so pure it brought tears to Seraphina's eyes.
Then—
A single tendril shot upward, its tip unfurling into a perfect golden leaf. It hovered there, trembling, as if testing the air.
Lysandra gasped, her blade arm flashing up instinctively. "Wait—"
The leaf moved.
Faster than thought, it lashed out, embedding itself into the meat of Riven's forearm. He cried out, not in pain, but shock, as the tendril burrowed beneath his skin, its golden veins spreading up his arm like liquid fire.
Seraphina lunged forward, but Lysandra caught her with surprising strength. "Don't!" she warned. "Look!"
Riven's back arched as the roots in his hair detached, falling to the ground like dead snakes. In their place, new growth emerged—vibrant and gold, pulsing with the same light as the seed. His wounds from the battle knit themselves shut, the corruption expelled in wisps of black smoke.
When he opened his eyes, they were no longer just gold.
They were alive—pupils shaped like budding leaves, the whites replaced by swirling patterns of root and vine.
"The roots chose their warden," Lysandra murmured, her own transformed arm resonating with a sympathetic glow.
A sound like cracking ice split the air. Seraphina turned just in time to see Lysandra's radiant form flicker violently—the light stuttering, her edges blurring. "Lys?" she reached out, but her fingers passed through her sister's arm as if it were mist.
Lysandra looked down at herself, her expression eerily calm. "It's taking too much," she said simply. "The dagger's power...it wasn't meant to stay."
Riven stepped forward, his new roots twining anxiously. "There has to be another way."
The ground between them trembled, and a familiar voice whispered through the leaves:
"There is."
The First Gardener's presence washed over them, though her form remained unseen. "But the price is higher."
Lysandra didn't hesitate. "Name it."
The wind carried the answer, rustling through the golden leaves now sprouting from Riven's hair:
"A king's sacrifice. A queen's blade. And a gardener's hands to tend the new growth."
Seraphina's breath caught. She looked at Riven—his new roots, his living eyes. At Lysandra—her fading light, her unstable form. And lastly, to herself, the only one still fully human. The pieces clicked together with terrible clarity.