The black water swallowed sound.
Lin Moyan waded into the shallows, each step stirring the inky surface into swirling patterns. The silver seed burned in his palm, its light reflecting off the water like scattered stars. Ahead, his father stood motionless, the broken halves of his gravity staff orbiting him like loyal hounds.
Kainan looked older than Moyan remembered. The roots had claimed parts of him—his left arm was more vine than flesh, his right eye glowed with the same eerie light as the World Will's core. But his voice, when it came, was the same gravel rasp from childhood.
"You took your time."
Jian Luo hesitated at the water's edge. His fingers twitched toward the dagger at his belt—the instinct of a man who still didn't trust his own memories. "Is this another one of the Serpent's tricks?"
Haiyu stepped past him without hesitation. The water darkened where her blood dripped from her broken wrist.
Kainan's gaze flickered to her, then away. A silent conversation passed between them in the space of a breath.
Moyan forced his numb lips to move. "The seed—"
"—isn't what you think." Kainan raised his root-twisted arm. The water trembled. "It's not a weapon. It's a confession."
The vision struck like lightning:
**The First Truth: Nyxara's Choice**
_A woman kneels in the clearing, but this time the dagger in her hands isn't star-metal—it's living wood. The blade sinks into her own chest. Not to die. To birth. The seed takes root in her heart, fed by her memories, her regrets, her love for the world she's doomed._
Moyan gasped. The silver seed in his hand pulsed hotter.
Kainan's voice cut through the vision. "Every Warden carries one. Mine is spent. Yours is waking."
**The Second Truth: The Serpent's Nature**
The water rippled. Shapes formed beneath the surface—not roots, but something older. Something that coiled around the World Will like a lover.
"It's not a parasite," Kainan said. "It's the first gardener. The one who taught Nyxara how to make the Abyss." His ruined hand gestured to the pulsing roots around them. "This was never a prison. It was an experiment."
Jian Luo made a choked sound. "Experimenting with what?"
"Us." Kainan's glowing eye fixed on Moyan. "Our choices. Our capacity to change."
The water at their feet darkened further. The seed's light dimmed.
**The Third Truth: The Price**
Kainan's remaining flesh began to flake away like old bark. "The seal needs a Warden's memories to hold. I've given mine." His voice grew faint. "Now it needs yours."
Haiyu moved first. She caught Kainan's disintegrating hand, her lips shaping words too fast to follow.
Jian Luo grabbed Moyan's shoulder. "Don't even think about—"
The water erupted.
Tendrils of liquid shadow lashed upward, wrapping around Kainan's legs, his waist, his chest. Pulling him under.
Haiyu held on.
Moyan lunged.
The black water closed over their heads.
**The Descent Into Memory**
Darkness swallowed them whole.
Moyan's lungs burned as the water pressed in from all sides, thick as oil and twice as heavy. The silver seed's glow barely pierced the gloom, revealing glimpses of things suspended in the depths—fragments of stone pillars carved with spirals, shattered masks floating like dead leaves, bones wrapped in roots that still pulsed with faint life.
Haiyu's hand found his wrist, her grip iron-strong despite her injuries. Ahead, Kainan's form flickered in and out of view as the roots dragged him deeper.
The pressure built in Moyan's skull, the Rootheart whispering warnings he couldn't quite grasp. Then—
Light.
A sphere of golden radiance bloomed below them, its source a massive knot of roots at the very heart of the World Will. The tendrils released Kainan as they passed into its glow, his body drifting downward like a falling leaf.
Moyan kicked toward the light, Haiyu at his side. As they breached the surface of the glowing sphere, the water vanished. They fell through empty air, landing hard on a surface that shouldn't exist—a circular platform of living wood, suspended in the void.
Kainan lay motionless at its center. Above him, the roots had formed a terrible tableau—a perfect recreation of Nyxara's final moments, frozen in time. Her arms outstretched, her mouth open in a silent scream, the living dagger buried to the hilt in her chest.
**The Fourth Truth: The Cycle's Heart**
Moyan staggered to his feet. The platform trembled beneath him, the wood groaning like a living thing in pain.
"This is where it began," Kainan whispered. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. "And where it ends."
Haiyu crouched beside him, her hands moving rapidly. Moyan didn't need to see the signs to know what she asked.
Kainan's smile was a terrible thing. "Because the seal was never meant to hold the Serpent. It was meant to hold us."
The roots above them shuddered. Nyxara's frozen form cracked like old pottery, revealing not flesh beneath, but swirling darkness shot through with pinpricks of light—a miniature cosmos contained within the World Will's heart.
The silver seed in Moyan's hand flared white-hot. He understood now.
The Abyss wasn't just an experiment.
It was an ark.
**The Choice**
Jian Luo's voice echoed strangely through the void, though he was nowhere to be seen. "Moyan! The water—it's rising!"
Indeed, the black liquid now lapped at the edges of the wooden platform, tendrils probing its underside. The roots holding Nyxara's form began to dissolve, the cosmic darkness within straining toward freedom.
Kainan gripped Moyan's arm with surprising strength. "The seed holds one final memory. Nyxara's gift. But to use it—"
"—I have to give up my own," Moyan finished.
Haiyu's hands found his face, forcing him to meet her gaze. Her fingers shaped a single word against his skin:
*Remember.*
Outside their fragile bubble of light, the darkness gathered. The Serpent's voice, when it came, was the sound of roots splitting stone:
*"Show me what you are, little Warden."*
Moyan closed his eyes.
And let the seed burn him whole.