The jungle held its breath.
Lin Moyan crouched in the hollow of a petrified oak, his journal clutched tight against his chest. The leather binding creaked under his grip as he pressed himself deeper into the shadows. Around him, the Verdant Abyss pulsed with unnatural silence. The ever-present drone of insects, the whisper of leaves, even the distant cries of void-beasts - all gone.
Only the wind remained, slithering through the trees like a dying serpent.
His fingers trembled as they traced the edge of his journal. The pages were damp with sweat and jungle humidity, the ink of his sketches slightly blurred. The most recent drawing - a silver flower with too many petals - seemed to glow faintly in the dim light.
Across the clearing, the thing that had stalked them since dawn stepped into the moonlight.
It wore the shape of a man, but the Abyss had reshaped it. Vines pulsed beneath its skin like veins; its mouth split too wide when it spoke, lined with thorns that clicked together like chitinous teeth. Moyan had seen many horrors in the depths of the jungle, but never one that looked at him with recognition.
*"Little botanist,"* it rasped, its voice like roots tearing through stone. *"You took a memory from me. I've come to take one from you."*
Behind Moyan, Jian Luo's breath hitched. His sonic dagger gleamed in the moonlight, the blade slick with the Abyss's black nectar. The weapon hummed at a frequency that made Moyan's teeth ache.
"Plan?" Jian Luo muttered, his usual bravado tempered by the tension in his shoulders.
Moyan swallowed hard. He knew exactly what the creature wanted - the sketch in his journal, the one of the silver flower he'd plucked from the Maw of Titans. The flower that had whispered a name in a language no human throat should speak.
The creature took another step forward, its elongated shadow stretching across the clearing. The air grew thick with the scent of rotting fruit and something metallic.
Then it lunged.
And the storm broke.
---
### **The First Strike**
Moyan moved on instinct honed by years of survival in the Abyss. His boot kicked up a cloud of bioluminescent pollen as he rolled sideways, the creature's claws scoring deep furrows in the earth where his head had been just moments before. The impact sent vibrations through the soil - right, left, six paces - his body interpreting the tremors before his mind could catch up.
Jian Luo wasn't as fast. The creature's backhand caught him across the chest, sending him crashing into a nearby tree. Bark splintered under the impact, and for a terrifying moment, Moyan thought he heard bones crack. The sonic dagger skittered across the moss-covered ground, its resonance grooves clogged with sap.
"Jian!" Moyan scrambled forward, but the roots beneath his feet twisted unnaturally, yanking him off-balance. He hit the ground hard, the breath knocked from his lungs.
The creature loomed over him, its thorned mouth unhinging to reveal a black void within. *"You should have stayed deaf, Lin Moyan."*
Then -
A scream tore through the canopy. Not human. Not beast.
*Haiyu.*
---
### **The Second Voice**
Moyan's mother dropped from the trees like a vengeful spirit, her twin daggers flashing in the moonlight. One blade sank deep into the creature's shoulder, the other aimed for its throat - but the thing moved with unnatural speed, catching her wrist and snapping it with a wet crack.
Haiyu didn't cry out. She spat in its face.
The creature recoiled as the saliva sizzled against its vine-knit skin. *"You,"* it hissed. *"Kainan's whore."*
Something inside Moyan snapped.
He lunged forward, his father's gravity knife humming to life in his grip. The blade - forged from a shard of the Iron Sky itself - sheared through the creature's arm at the elbow. Black sap sprayed across Moyan's face, burning like acid where it touched his skin.
The thing howled, clutching its stump. *"You'll regret that, Warden."*
Then it dissolved before their eyes, its body unraveling into a swarm of glowing pollen that streaked eastward through the trees.
Toward the Celestial Vine Sect.
Toward the Serpent.
---
### **The Aftermath**
Jian Luo groaned as he pushed himself upright, pressing a hand to his cracked ribs. "Next time... warn me before your family starts a war," he gasped, his usual smirk strained with pain.
Haiyu cradled her broken wrist, her face pale but determined. Her hands shaped sharp signs in the air: *"It called you Warden."*
Moyan wiped the burning sap from his eyes. The word sat heavy in his chest, a stone sinking into dark water. He'd heard it before - in the Rootheart's whispers, in the ghost emperor's warnings.
*"The Wardens remember so the world may forget."*
Jian Luo limped over, retrieving his dagger from the moss. The weapon's hum had changed pitch, the sound more strained than before. "Whatever that thing was," he said, nodding eastward where the trees grew denser, their trunks twisted into unnatural spirals, "it's headed exactly where we're going." He managed a weak grin. "Convenient."
Moyan opened his journal with trembling hands. The sketch of the silver flower glowed faintly, its petals trembling as if caught in a breeze no one else could feel. The name it had whispered echoed in his bones:
*Nyxara.*
The Rootheart stirred in his spine, its voice slithering through his thoughts. *"She was the first. The one who bound the Serpent."*
Haiyu's hands stilled in mid-sign. *"And the first to fail."*
Above them, the clouds cracked open with a sound like tearing flesh.
The storm had only just begun.