The road out of the city stretched silent and slick with rain.
Jace walked alone, the vine‑blade strapped to his back, his footsteps echoing against broken pavement. The air pulsed faintly with the aftershock of what he had done; every plant he passed bowed slightly, petals closing in reverence. The world seemed to whisper his triumph.
And yet, inside, something uncertain stirred.
"Do not mourn her," Gia's voice soothed. "Pain is purification."
He said nothing, only clenched his jaw until the echo faded. The silence that followed was thick, alive.
He reached an overpass blanketed in moss. The highway beneath had become a river of grass, its painted lanes now veins that glowed faintly under the twilight. He paused to rest. That's when he noticed the traveler.
The man sat by a crumbling signpost at the end of the bridge. Wrapped in tattered robes the color of soil, he looked impossibly old—skin like bark, hair threaded with silver strands of moss. Still, his eyes were clear, sharp as two stars caught in human form.
He raised his head as Jace approached.
"You smell of the Tenth Bloom," the man said, voice rasped by time.
Jace froze. "Who are you?"
"A gardener, once." The man smiled. "Long before the world stopped listening."
He gestured to the field below, where faint lines of light pulsed through the earth like the veins of a massive dormant creature. "You've helped her wake, haven't you?"
"She's already awake," Jace answered carefully.
"Ah. Spoken like one who's tasted her dreams." The man chuckled softly, though it wasn't cruel. "Tell me, boy, when she whispers to you—can you tell where her voice ends and yours begins?"
Jace stiffened. "She speaks truth."
The man tilted his head. "Truth, yes. But whose truth?"
Jace took a step forward. "Why do you care?"
"Because," the traveler said, and his smile faded, "I tended the first root. I watched Gia become what you now call Mother Nature. I warned her, once, that love taken from pain becomes something else. She didn't listen either."
Jace's heart pounded. "Lies," he snarled. "No human was alive then."
The old man laughed. "And yet, here I am."
He reached into the folds of his robe and produced a small shard of glass encased in vine. It pulsed with faint light. "Your brother carries the same glow. You'll find him soon enough. But remember this—"
He leaned closer, eyes gleaming with terrible tenderness.
"Your Mother was once like you: certain she was saving the world when she was only rewriting her grief."
Jace's hand twitched toward his blade. "Stand aside."
"I already did," the traveler said. "And that's why the earth drowned."
By the time the rain enshrouded the bridge, the man was gone. Only the shard remained where he had sat, the vine curling around it like a heartbeat.
Jace picked it up. The glow inside flickered between green and silver — between her energy and something unfamiliar. When he squeezed it, a whisper bled into his thoughts—not Gia's, not his own.
"He still loves you."
The voice vanished as quickly as it came, leaving him breathless.
For the first time since leaving Eden's Vein, Gia's silence followed. It didn't feel peaceful; it felt watchful.
Jace lowered his hand, staring toward the horizon where dark clouds gathered over distant mountains.
"Brother," he whispered. "What have you become?"
And from far below the earth, something ancient trembled—like roots shifting their course.
Would you like the next chapter to shift back to Cobi, picking up on that same tremor as he arrives at the site of the next awakening, or stay with Jace a little longer, showing Gia's reaction to his brief rebellion and tightening her hold on him?