Chapter 38
Some truths don’t shatter the world.
They undermine it.
Like root-rot beneath sacred soil.
Like a prayer repeated so many times, no one dares ask who wrote it first or why.
The morning after the emissary’s retreat, the Hollow pulsed with a strange energy.
Not alarm.
Anticipation.
The saplings especially Nira’s, hummed faintly, as if the flame she chose still echoed inside them.
But Elira was already beneath the Root-Archive by dawn.
Not alone.
Kael followed, torch in one hand, the other resting on the hilt of his blade. Just in case.
“You felt it too?” he asked.
Elira nodded. “Something’s waking up.”
At the lowest tier of the Root-Archive, beyond the memory scribed in bark, past the layer sealed by the ash-crown’s fall, lay a chamber they had never dared open.
Not
