The forest did not sleep that night.
It breathed.
A slow, ancient rhythm—like lungs expanding beneath the soil, roots exhaling spores of old memory into the air. Thornwood's heart had not just been stirred; it had begun to awaken, and every branch knew it.
Kaelyn stood in the center of her chamber in the Verdant Spire, the cracked shard of bark still warm in her palm. Its silver edge had blackened at the core, as if the First Root had left a piece of itself embedded in her soul.
She had felt it. Not just in the pool, not just in the girl—it was everywhere now. In the soil, in the sap, in the very blood of the rootborn.
She closed her hand into a fist and exhaled. "So it begins."
At dawn, greenfire bloomed.
It began in the Hollow Verge, where elder trees bore blossoms once thought extinct—blossoms that shimmered with an inner flame. At first, the Rootborn Council believed it to be a gift—until the petals pulsed and sang.
Not with music.
With memory.
Visions poured into the minds of those who touched them—ancient rites, forgotten wars, names never spoken aloud. Entire lives flashed behind the eyes of villagers. Children awoke speaking in voices centuries old. One girl, no more than ten, began weeping for a sister she never had… but whose bones lay buried beneath the Moonstone Glade.
Kaelyn and Eran arrived as the fourth tree ignited with greenfire. Its flames did not consume—it transmuted. The bark hardened into crystal. The sap glowed like liquid starlight. The roots no longer spread—they reached.
Eran touched one of the flaming leaves and staggered back. "They're not just visions," he murmured. "They're invitations."
"To what?" Kaelyn asked, heart heavy with knowing.
"To return," he said, voice hollow.
That evening, Kaelyn summoned the entire council to the Spiral Basin—a wide clearing encircled by the oldest trees of Thornwood, whose roots once formed the barrier against the Thorn Queen's reign.
Now they stirred restlessly.
The basin shimmered with greenfire.
Kaelyn raised the shard of bark, its cracked edge glowing like a dying star.
"The First Root is not trying to dominate us," she said. "Not as the Thorn Queen did. It doesn't want chains. It wants roots."
"Roots that reach into our minds," the young seer snapped. "Into our children."
Kaelyn met his eyes, her voice calm. "It wants continuity. It wants to be remembered. It feeds not on fear—but on belonging. It has no body of its own. So it plants itself in us."
"And what do you propose?" asked the elder rootkin. "Do we simply let it? Let Thornwood become the altar of a forgotten god?"
"No," Kaelyn said. "But if we try to tear it out, we'll tear ourselves apart. The First Root is not some foreign poison. It was born here. It was left here."
Murmurs spread again. Eran stepped forward.
"There's another way."
He held up a second shard—this one darker than Kaelyn's, wrapped in his own vines.
"It called to Kaelyn through memory. But I believe we can call back."
"How?" someone asked. "It is older than language."
"Then we speak through what it understands," Kaelyn said. "Not command. Not submission. We speak through story."
That night, Kaelyn began the first Rite of Remembering.
It had no altar. No fire. No blood.
Only voice.
Beneath the Verdant Spire, the rootborn gathered—child and elder, tree spirit and kinblood, the cursed and the cured. Each spoke a truth, a story of who they had been before the forest's change.
A mother told of the child she buried before the Thorn Queen's fall.
A spirit of ash wept through a vessel, telling of the time it had once sung in the treetops.
Kaelyn stood last.
"I was born from a curse," she said, "but I chose not to pass it on. I broke the chain. But even broken chains leave scars. I carry them."
She placed the cracked shard on the earth, and from its fracture, a bloom emerged—neither thorn nor flame, but something new.
A spiral of petals glowing green at the tips, silver at the root.
The First Root did not speak that night.
But in the stillness, every tree bowed.
As the council dispersed, Kaelyn lingered at the bloom. Eran joined her in silence.
"You're not afraid?" he asked.
"I'm terrified," she said.
He nodded. "Good. It means you're still mortal."
She met his gaze. "Not for long, if this continues."
Eran didn't answer. Instead, he placed a hand on her shoulder and pointed north—toward the edge of Thornwood, where sky met ruin.
"Something is stirring there. Something other. Not root. Not shadow. Stone."
Kaelyn's breath caught. "The forgotten kingdom."
He nodded. "If the First Root is gathering its body… it may be drawing others to do the same."
She looked down at the bloom again, its silver center pulsing gently like a heartbeat.
"We were warned about the First Root," she whispered.
"What about the Second?" Eran asked.
She didn't speak.
Because somewhere in her blood, something ancient laughed softly—and began to stir.