"Mama?"
The word still haunted me.
Even now.
Even after I knew the truth.
The thing beneath the Heart wasn't my mother.
It had never been my mother.
It had simply reached into the deepest wound inside me...
and found the voice I would follow anywhere.
Serenity.
Papa.
Home.
Love.
It had worn all of them like masks.
And I had almost believed it.
The sanctuary barely resembled the beautiful place we'd first discovered.
Half the white trees had lost their leaves.
The silver stream had overflowed its banks.
Cracks split the stone floor, glowing with the deep crimson light rising from whatever waited beneath us.
The Heart Tree stood at the center of it all.
Broken.
Bleeding black-gold light.
And beneath its roots—
something breathed.
Slowly.
Patiently.
Waiting.
THUMP.
