The silence after their escape was not peace.
It was waiting.
Kael sat with his back against the roots of a gnarled tree, the bottle resting in his lap. Mara crouched nearby, tending to Cire, who was still unconscious, her breathing shallow but steady. The forest around them was thick with mist and the scent of damp soil. Above, the sky remained eerily blank—no stars, no moon, just a grey smudge of drifting clouds.
Kael hadn't said a word in half an hour.
The mark—green, spectral—still hovered faintly over Cire's chest, like a wound in space.
"She's not waking up," Mara muttered. "Whatever that thing did… it's still in her."
Kael looked at the bottle. "It didn't attack her. It… pushed her out."
"What do you mean?"
"She tried to bind it with a Pact. And it rejected her."
Mara frowned. "That's not supposed to happen."
"I know."
He didn't need to say more. The rules were shifting. Kael could feel it—beneath the skin, beneath the bones. The bottle's presence was stronger now, not just humming, but aware. And more than that, reactive.
He touched the seal lightly.
The bottle pulsed once.
Then, without warning, a thin line of light extended from its base, drawing a symbol on the ground. Not carved. Not etched. Just… floating. A glowing green glyph formed—a knotwork of shapes, none familiar.
Kael didn't recognize it, but something inside him did.
He reached forward, fingers trembling.
The moment he touched the glyph, his vision shattered.
—
The world inverted.
He stood—not in the forest—but within a spiral of roots that stretched into the sky like a cathedral made of bone and memory. The roots pulsed with green light, alive, moving like breathing things.
In the center was a figure.
Not a man.
Not a woman.
Something between, cloaked in growth and decay, skin formed of bark and ash.
It had no face.
Only a mask—a hollow circle carved with hundreds of tiny runes.
"You opened it too early," the voice said. It wasn't heard—it was grown inside his skull.
Kael couldn't move.
"Too young. Too thin. The root is not ready."
He tried to speak, but his throat was sealed by air.
The masked figure stepped forward. "But it has begun. The Reversal is in motion."
"What… are you?" Kael forced out.
The mask tilted. "Not what. Why."
"I don't understand."
"You will. If you live."
The vision collapsed.
—
Kael gasped, falling backward as the glyph faded into mist.
Mara rushed to him. "What happened?"
"I saw something. A… root cathedral. A being with a mask."
"A what?"
"I think it was… Virelin."
That name shouldn't have meant anything. But it did. Deep in his chest, something resonated.
The bottle had whispered it once, barely audible: Virelin.
Mara's expression changed. "You're serious?"
Kael nodded. "It said the Reversal has begun."
"Reversal of what?"
He looked toward the horizon. The forest had gone still.
"I don't know. But we're not going back to Hollowrest."
"Then where?"
"To the edge," Kael whispered. "Where the root ends."
—
Cire stirred.
Not awake.
But dreaming.
And in her dream, something new spoke her name.
Not Kael.
Not Mara.
Not the bottle.
Something… beneath.
Something hungry.