The emerald light erupting from my skin wasn't just power; it was a conversation. I could feel every leaf in the hanging gardens shivering in the breeze, every ripple in the turquoise lagoon, and every rot-softened timber in Califer's approaching fleet. The island wasn't a place; it was a body, and for the first time in ten years, my soul fit the skin I was in.
"Alysia, get back!" Silas shouted, his voice nearly drowned out by the groaning of the tectonic plates beneath us.
I didn't move. I couldn't. I was the anchor. I slammed my palms against the wooden deck of the Aeon's Wing, and the ship didn't just move—it surged forward, propelled by a violent, sentient current of the sanctuary's own making. As we cleared the threshold of the Great Gate, I turned my gaze back toward the Dread-Sovereign.
Califer was screaming orders, his dark sorcerers flinging bolts of violet shadow to wither the vines I had summoned. "The girl!" he roared, pointing a trembling finger at me. "Bring me the girl alive! The rest can feed the fish!"
"You are not welcome in this garden," I whispered.
The Sentinels echoed my voice in a deafening, tectonic roar. I reached deep into the bedrock of Aethelgard, grasping the literal roots of the world. With a primal scream that tore from the center of my chest, I yanked upward. Massive, barnacle-encrusted vines—thick as cathedral pillars—burst from the lagoon floor. They didn't just entangle the Hive's ships; they wove together into a living, impenetrable wall of thorns and ancient, petrified wood.
The Great Gate began to seal. I saw Califer's face one last time—a mask of panicked realization as he saw his "weapon" become his undoing—before I channeled every remaining spark of the emerald fire into a single pulse of displacement.
"Begone!"
The air imploded. A blinding flash of white and green light consumed the horizon, a surge of spatial energy that didn't just push the fleet back; it folded the very fabric of the sea around them. In a heartbeat, the Dread-Sovereign and its vipers were torn from the sanctuary's waters, cast back across the ocean to the salt-blasted shores of the Hive's wasteland, leagues away from the peace of Aethelgard.
The silence that followed was absolute.
The emerald glow faded from my skin, leaving behind a cold, hollow ache that felt like winter in my bones. My knees buckled first, the wooden deck feeling like a soft, receding cloud.
"Lysia! Alysia!" Silas's voice was far away, drifting through water.
I felt hands catch me—warm, steady hands—but the world was already dissolving into a soft gray mist. My heart slowed to a whisper, and as the darkness claimed me, the last thing I felt was the scent of blooming jasmine and the impossible, heavy weight of a name I had finally reclaimed.
The darkness wasn't empty. It smelled of sun-warmed hay and the crisp, clean air of the High-Valleys.
I was standing in a field of wildflowers that stretched into forever. Two figures stood waiting for me, bathed in a soft, golden light that didn't hurt to look at. My breath hitched. My mother, her silver hair braided with wild ivy, and my father, his eyes crinkled with the kind of pride I had only dreamt of in my darkest hours.
"Mama? Papa?" I ran toward them, my feet feeling light, the weight of the porcelain mask and the iron blades finally gone.
I collapsed into my mother's arms, weeping with a grief I hadn't allowed myself to feel since the fires began. "Why? Why did you leave me? Why am I like this... a daughter of the Tree? What am I supposed to do?"
My father placed a heavy, comforting hand on my shoulder. "You were never meant to be a weapon, Alysia. You were a seed we tried to hide from the winter."
I looked up at my mother, searching her face for the truth I had bled for. "Califer said the Tree will burn. He said my origin is a curse. Tell me the truth. Who am I really?"
My mother smiled, a bittersweet expression that held the depth of the ocean. She reached out, her fingers stroking my cheek with a touch that felt like a summer breeze. Her skin was warm, and she smelled of home.
"Not yet, my brave leaf," she whispered, her voice a melody I had once hummed to keep the dark away. "The truth is a sun that would blind you if you saw it all at once. In the right time, when the roots are deep enough, you will know everything. For now... you must bloom."
"Don't leave me!" I cried as their forms began to shimmer and fade into white light. "Please, I have so many questions!"
"We are the soil beneath your feet, Alysia," my father's voice echoed. "We are never truly gone."
I gasped, my eyes snapping open.
The golden field was gone. The smell of jasmine had been replaced by the sterile, sharp scent of crushed herbs and clean linen. My body felt like it was made of lead, every muscle protesting as I tried to shift.
I stared upward at an unfamiliar ceiling. It wasn't the jagged stone of the Hive or the silk-draped rafters of the Dresvan estate. The ceiling was made of living wood, the beams twisting together in intricate, organic patterns that pulsed with a faint, comforting green light.
"You're awake," a voice said softly.
I turned my head slowly. I wasn't in a cage. I was in a room filled with light, overlooking a city of ivory and emerald. And sitting by my bedside, his golden eyes filled with a relief that made my chest ache, was Silas.
"Where am I?" I rasped, my voice sounding like ground gravel.
"The Heart of Aethelgard," Silas replied, leaning forward and taking my hand. "And for the first time in three hundred years, the Queen of the Root has returned to her throne."