CHAPTER 6: BREACH
Ethan woke to screaming.
Not human.
Worse.
Plant screaming.
The sanctuary's roots—shrieking, wood splintering, nails on chalkboard vibrating through earth itself—and he rolled out of the hammock, hit ground hard, tasted copper.
No.
Not copper.
Herbicide.
Chemical burn. Bitter. Like bleach fucking gasoline and something rotting underneath, organic-sweet, the way compost smells when you forget it for three weeks in August heat, and his LE was dropping—289 no 302 no wait dropping—and the bioluminescent vines overhead flickered.
Dimmed.
Died.
Darkness swallowed the sanctuary.
Then—emergency lights, red, pulsing from nodes in the root-walls like infected wounds, and the garden was chaos—Users scrambling, some grabbing weapons (makeshift spears, vine whips, clubs wrapped in thorns that were already wilting, turning black), others trying to grow barriers but the vines erupted from soil only to wither mid-growth, blackening, brittle, screaming—
(Plants don't scream.)
(Except they do.)
(Except they are.)
Ethan smelled it stronger now—not just herbicide, something layered, gasoline and formaldehyde and burnt hair, and his hindbrain was shrieking predator predator RUN—
"NORTH WALL COMPROMISED!"
He turned.
The root-wall at the sanctuary's northern edge was melting—not crumbling, not breaking, melting—bark turning grey then black then sloughing off in wet chunks like skin peeling after severe sunburn, and beneath it the living wood hissed and bubbled, eaten by something invisible, and through the widening gap—
Light.
Harsh. White. Blinding after the sanctuary's bioluminescent dim, and Ethan's eyes watered, and he saw shapes—tactical gear, respirators, compact rifles with under-barrel canisters marked green biohazard symbols—and they moved like professionals, not cultists, soldiers—
No.
Worse.
Thornbound.
The first one raised his rifle and fired—not bullets—spray, fine mist erupting from the canister, spreading across the garden, and where it touched plants they screamed (leaves curling, stems blackening, flowers bursting into ash), and where it touched Users—
A woman to Ethan's left gasped.
Her skin turned grey.
She fell.
Convulsing.
Vines erupted from her mouth—thrashing, desperate, reaching for light that wasn't there—then withering, turning to dust, and she stopped moving and her eyes were empty, just empty, like the birch-man, like everyone he'd killed, like—
Ethan ran.
Not away.
Toward.
Toward the training area where Mira kept the weapons because running away meant dying in the tunnels and he'd rather die fighting—
(Liar. You just want to kill something.)
(You want to FEED.)
—and behind him gunfire erupted, not the spray, actual bullets, Users screaming-falling-dying, and some tried to fight back (vines lashing out, roots erupting) but the herbicide had saturated the air and their powers sputtered, failed, and one man managed to summon a thick wall of brambles—
A Thornbound soldier tossed a grenade.
The brambles exploded.
Burning.
The man behind it too.
Ethan reached the training area and grabbed a thorn-wrapped club from the rack and it felt pathetic in his hands, useless, like bringing a kitchen knife to a gunfight, and he thought—
What am I doing what am I doing what am I—
"ETHAN!"
He spun.
Mira sprinted toward him, blood streaming from a gash on her temple—dark red mixing with green sap where the wound had tried to seal itself and failed—and her vines were out, dozens of them whipping around her like living armor, but they were wilting, turning brown at the tips, and she smelled like ozone and burnt leaves.
"They're flooding the sanctuary!" she shouted, voice hoarse. "Pumping herbicide through the ventilation roots! We have maybe three minutes before—"
An explosion.
Behind them.
The eastern wall detonated—not melted, blown apart—chunks of root and earth spraying across the garden, and Ethan felt the shockwave hit his chest like a physical blow, and through the smoking gap stepped—
A woman.
Tall. Six feet easily. Black tactical armor fused with organic material—vines growing through the plating, wrapping around her limbs like living gauntlets—and her helmet was cracked open on one side, revealing half her face.
She was beautiful.
And wrong.
Her visible eye was solid green—no pupil, no iris, just chlorophyll reflecting the emergency lights—and her skin was bark-textured, dark, rough like old oak, and when she breathed, flowers bloomed from her shoulders—red, dripping something that smelled like rotting fruit and honey—
Ethan's LE spiked.
(Danger. DANGER. APEX PREDATOR.)
The woman smiled.
Her teeth were thorns.
"Ethan CROSS," she said, voice smooth, musical, poisonous like nightshade wrapped in silk. "You're smaller than I expected."
Mira stepped in front of Ethan.
Vines coiling tighter.
"You're not taking him."
The woman tilted her head.
"I'm not here to take him, Verdant." She raised her hand—fingers extending, not fingers anymore, roots, ten feet long, barbed, dripping something dark and wet that hissed when it hit the ground. "I'm here to harvest him."
The roots launched.
Mira countered—her vines shot forward, intercepting mid-air, wrapping around the roots, pulling—and the woman yanked and Mira flew forward, slammed into the ground hard enough to crack stone, and the roots wrapped around her throat and squeezed—
Mira choked.
Face turning purple.
Vines thrashing weakly.
"Wait—" Ethan started.
The woman glanced at him.
"You want to save her?" Her smile widened. "Then come here. Surrender. I'll make it quick."
Mira was dying—skin greying, eyes bulging, and Ethan could see the light fading from them, see her vines withering, and something in his chest broke—
(Not broke. Woke up.)
His LE surged.
Not rose.
Surged.
Like a dam breaking, like magma punching through stone, and he felt the roots around his heart move—twisting, growing, reaching up through his ribs and into his arms—and he raised his hand and pointed at the woman and screamed—
No words.
Just rage.
Green light exploded from his palm.
Not a beam.
A wave.
It crashed into the woman and she gasped—her roots recoiled, Mira fell coughing and gasping—and the woman staggered back and for three seconds she looked shocked, and then she started laughing.
"Oh," she breathed. "Oh, you're delicious."
She lunged.
Faster than Ethan could process—his brain registered there and then here with no transition—and her hand closed around his throat and lifted him off the ground and he couldn't breathe, vision blurring, and she leaned close and her breath smelled like rotting flowers and wet earth.
"I can taste it," she whispered. "The Primordial. Nested in you. Growing. Spreading." Her green eye reflected his face. "You're not a User, little seed. You're a garden."
Ethan couldn't breathe couldn't think couldn't—
(DO SOMETHING)
—and his hand moved on instinct, grabbed her wrist, and he didn't think just pulled—
LIFE DRAIN.
The woman's eye went wide.
Her LE flooded into him—hot, thick, wrong, tasting like copper and burnt sugar and something floral-rotten—and it poured in and his veins glowed beneath his skin, green light pulsing, spreading, burning, and his body was screaming too much too fast STOP—
But he couldn't stop.
Didn't want to stop.
It felt too good—like drinking after three days in the desert, like finally eating after starving, like coming home—and the woman's skin started to grey, cracks appearing in her bark-flesh, and she was staring at him with something that might have been fear or might have been respect—
And then—
Something else.
Inside him.
The roots around his heart didn't ask permission.
They just grew.
Through his chest. Up his throat. Down his arms. Erupting from his forearms—thick as cables, barbed, hungry, alive—and they wrapped around the woman's arm and burrowed, punching through her bark-skin, spreading beneath like parasites seeking marrow—
She dropped him.
Staggered back.
Stared at her arm.
The roots were inside her now—moving beneath her skin like snakes, draining her, feeding him—and Ethan felt it, tasted it, her LE pouring into him in a torrent that made his previous drains feel like sipping from a straw—
127 LE absorbed.
Current: 498.
Max: 500.
Overload imminent.
The woman screamed.
Not pain.
Rage.
She ripped the roots out—chunks of her own flesh came with them, black sap spraying like arterial blood—and she hurled the severed roots aside and they withered instantly, turning grey-brown-dead, and she glared at Ethan with an expression that promised suffering.
"You dare—"
"BRIAR! FALL BACK!"
A voice from outside—male, authoritative, military-crisp—and the woman (Briar?) snarled but obeyed, turning and sprinting through the eastern gap, and the other Thornbound soldiers followed, and gunfire ceased, and—
Silence.
Broken only by distant sobbing and the hiss of dying plants.
Ethan collapsed.
His body was rejecting the excess LE—he could feel it, burning in his veins, trying to find somewhere to go, and his stomach lurched and he vomited—
Not food.
Sap.
Thick. Green. Glowing.
It poured out of him in a steady stream, pooling on the ground, soaking into dirt, and where it touched, plants erupted—grass, flowers, vines, growing at impossible speed, spreading across the sanctuary floor like wildfire—
(LE: 487... 456... 421...)
—and he couldn't stop it, couldn't control it, just kept vomiting green light and watching it grow and grow and grow—
A tree sprouted.
Six feet tall in seconds.
Then ten.
Then fifteen.
Then—
A hand pressed against his chest.
Warm.
Firm.
"Sleep," a voice commanded.
Kaito.
The world went black.
Ethan woke in the Memory Tree chamber.
Alone.
His entire body ached—not muscle ache, root ache, like his insides had been rearranged, which they had, he realized slowly, they had—and he sat up and looked at his arms.
The skin was scarred.
Not cut-scars.
Growth-scars.
Pale green lines tracing where roots had erupted, then retracted, leaving permanent marks like tattoos that pulsed faintly with his heartbeat.
He flexed his fingers.
Felt something shift beneath the skin.
Oh god they're still in there—
The door opened.
Sylvia entered.
She looked wrecked—hair loose, eyes red-rimmed, clothes stained with sap and something darker (blood, old blood, dried to brown-black)—and she sat down heavily across from him.
Didn't speak for a long moment.
Finally: "Twenty-three dead. Were dead. Are dead." Her voice cracked. "Sixteen wounded. Eight missing, presumed captured."
Ethan's stomach dropped.
"I—"
"Seven more died from your LE purge." Sylvia's voice was flat now, emotionless, clinical. "The plants you grew were aggressive. Strangled four people before we could cut them down. Three others had allergic reactions to the pollen. Suffocated."
Ethan couldn't breathe.
"I didn't mean—"
"I know." Sylvia looked at him. "That's the problem. You didn't mean to. But you did it anyway." She leaned forward. "You absorbed 127 LE from a Thornbound Harvester. Do you understand what that means?"
"I was dying—"
"You were surviving." Her expression hardened. "And survival doesn't care about intention. The Primordial inside you doesn't care if you're trying to be good. It just wants to grow."
She stood.
Walked to the Memory Tree.
Touched one of the leaves.
It shifted.
Showed a face.
Young. Male. Asian features. Scared.
Ethan recognized him—one of the Users from the sanctuary, quiet, had sat near the eastern garden, grew small flowers in his palms to calm himself—
Now dead.
Strangled by Ethan's vines.
"His name was David Park," Sylvia said quietly. "Twenty-two years old. Awakened three months ago. Tier-1. Could grow tulips." She looked back at Ethan. "He was harmless. And you killed him."
Ethan felt tears burning.
"I didn't—I didn't know—"
"You didn't know because you didn't ask." Sylvia's voice cracked again. "You just took. Absorbed. Grew. Like a weed."
(Like a weed.)
(Like something invasive.)
(Like something that needs to be pulled out by the roots.)
She turned away.
"Kaito wants to see you. Training hall. Now."
She left.
Ethan sat alone.
Staring at David Park's face in the leaf.
The tree remembered.
Everyone remembered.
Everyone would always remember.
The training hall was a massacre.
Bodies covered in white sheets—except the sheets weren't really white anymore, stained with sap and blood and ash—and the dirt floor was dark with it, and scorch marks decorated the walls where grenades had detonated, and the smell—
God, the smell—
Burnt wood and copper and something chemical-bitter that made Ethan's eyes water.
In the center—
Kaito.
The Elder sat cross-legged, eyes closed, hands resting on his knees, and in front of him lay a single seed—small, black, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat—
Ethan approached slowly.
His footsteps echoed wrong.
Too loud.
Too heavy.
"Sit," Kaito said without opening his eyes.
Ethan sat.
For a long moment, neither spoke.
Then: "Do you know what a Primordial is?" Kaito asked.
"A... consciousness? The First Forest?"
"Consciousness implies thought. Intent. Purpose." Kaito opened his eyes—the lichen-white irises reflected nothing, just absorbed light like dead stars. "The Primordial is none of those things. It is hunger. Pure. Endless. It wants to grow. Consume. Spread. Cover the world in roots and leaves until nothing else exists."
He picked up the seed.
"This is a fragment. A piece of that hunger. Contained. Dormant." He held it out. "Touch it."
Ethan hesitated.
"It's safe," Kaito said. "For now."
Ethan reached out—fingers trembling, he couldn't stop them from trembling—and the moment he brushed the seed—
Visions.
A forest.
Vast.
Endless.
Covering continents—devouring cities, roots cracking through skyscrapers like they were made of cardboard, vines strangling highways, and beneath it all hunger, so deep it had no bottom, just kept going down and down and down—
Ethan yanked his hand back.
Gasping.
Heart racing.
(That's inside me. That's what I'm carrying. That's what I'm becoming.)
Kaito set the seed down.
"That is what you carry," he said quietly. "Not all of it. But enough." He looked at Ethan. "The Primordial chose you because your soul has space. Emptiness. Loneliness. Hunger of a different kind."
Ethan's throat tightened.
"I'm not—"
"You are." Kaito's voice was gentle. "You've been hungry your whole life, Ethan. For connection. For purpose. For something that makes you feel whole." He paused. "The Primordial promises to fill that void. But it lies. It will never stop. It will consume you. And then everyone around you."
"Then how do I stop it?"
"You don't." Kaito smiled faintly. "You negotiate."
He stood.
Gestured for Ethan to follow.
They walked to the sanctuary's southern edge—where the evacuation tunnel had been sealed during the attack, root-walls grown thick to block Thornbound entry—
Now it was open again.
And beyond—
A forest.
Not the sanctuary's cultivated garden.
Wild forest.
Dark. Tangled. Ancient.
The trees were massive—trunks thick as houses, bark black like charcoal, roots thicker than cars coiling across the ground like sleeping serpents—and in the distance, green light pulsed, faint, rhythmic, like a heartbeat—
"This is the Old Growth," Kaito said. "A fragment of the First Forest. It existed before the Awakening. Before humans. Before language." He paused. "It is... aware."
Ethan stared into the darkness.
Felt it staring back.
"Why are we here?"
"Because if you want to control the Primordial, you must speak to it directly." Kaito turned to him. "You must go into the Old Growth. Alone. And make a deal."
"What kind of deal?"
"That depends on what it wants." Kaito's expression was unreadable. "And what you're willing to give."
Ethan looked at the tunnel—at the darkness beyond, at the green light pulsing like a beacon or a warning—
"What if I say no?"
"Then the Primordial will continue to grow. Uncontrolled. Until you become what Briar is." Kaito paused. "A Harvester. A tool of Thorne. Or worse—a force of nature with no humanity left."
Ethan's hands clenched.
(David Park's face. Twenty-three dead. Seven strangled by plants I grew.)
"When do I go?"
"Now." Kaito handed him a small pack—canvas, worn, smelling like dirt and dried herbs. "Supplies. Water. One LE-infusion vial. Enough to keep you alive for three days."
"Three days?!"
"The Old Growth exists outside normal time. You may be gone for hours. Or weeks." Kaito's lichen-eyes gleamed. "We won't know until you return." Pause. "If you return."
He stepped back.
"The Primordial respects strength. Show weakness, and it will devour you. Show arrogance, and it will break you." He paused. "Show respect, and perhaps—perhaps—it will teach you."
Ethan shouldered the pack.
Looked at Kaito one last time.
"If I don't come back—"
"We will bury what's left." Kaito's smile was sad. "And hope the forest is kind."
Ethan walked into the tunnel.
Into the darkness.
Behind him, the sanctuary's emergency lights faded.
Ahead—
Only green.