The tremor hit like a heartbeat deep beneath the world.
Cobi felt it before he heard it—an invisible pulse rising through the soles of his boots, climbing the spine of an abandoned cathedral now strangled by ivy. Every bell rope swung on its own. Dust drifted in shafts of green light, trembling as the air filled with faint humming, almost like voices singing just out of sync.
He straightened, breathing slow. "He's moving again," he whispered.
The others looked up from where they'd camped among broken pews.
Naila, born of the Veritas Ivy, wore her truth like armor; scars laced her hands from the vines she used as blades in battle.
Ezra, vessel of the Aurora Petal, kept a gentle brightness about him that softened even the shadows.
And Tariq, the carrier of the Umbra Thorn, barely spoke at all — his voice a sandstorm wrapped in patience.
Cobi had found them scattered along the coasts months earlier, each drawn toward him by dreams of fire and silver light. Together, they were fragments of her…but different. Not all the plants served blindly.
"This tremor," Naila said, standing, her eyes narrowing. "It's not an awakening. It's a death."
Cobi nodded. "He found another vessel."
Ezra frowned. "Then one less to stand with us."
The cathedral's floor cracked suddenly as moss turned to shimmering green, racing toward the altar. From that new growth rose a single stalk crowned with three luminescent petals. Cobi reached out to it instinctively.
"They are scattering," came the faint whisper within his skull — the echo of the Root Mind. "One is rising beneath the southern dunes… another sleeps beneath the polar glass. You must reach them before the betrayed son does."
He swallowed hard. "Then draw me a path."
The vines spread outward, carving glowing lines into the cracked floor, converging into a living map that pulsed with thirteen tiny lights. One of them dimmed until it went dark completely.
Jace's latest cleansing.
Cobi shut his eyes, pain rippling through him like a tide. The others stood around him in reverent silence.
"Every time he does this," Tariq said quietly, "she grows stronger."
"Which means," Cobi replied, opening his eyes, "if we want to stop her—we can't just be vessels. We have to be something new."
The group set out at dawn. The city lay drowned in fog—the kind that didn't rise from the sea but from the soil itself, alive and breathing. Car alarms blinked at random. Windows fogged and cleared on their own. Every sign that Jace had passed through made the world slightly more unnatural.
As they marched, Ezra hummed under his breath, a tone that kept the more violent plants from reacting to their footsteps.
Cobi looked over the smog‑covered ridges toward the horizon. From there, a faint emerald glow bled upward into the dull sky — the next awakening point.
A young girl, no older than thirteen, slept under its soil, carrying within her the Seraphel Moss, the gift of Healing. Her energy pulsed faintly within him, calling for help—but already Jace's resonance vibrated on the edge of the same frequency.
He turned to the others. "He's closer than we are."
"Then we move faster," Naila said, channeling vines up her arms, the motion slicing through the air like whips.
But inside, Cobi knew speed wasn't their advantage anymore. The plants had begun to choose sides.
And as they descended into the glowing valley, thunder cracked with a silver streak that spelled out the inevitable: brother against brother, both chasing the same light for opposite purposes.
At the valley's base, the ground trembled again. This time, not pain — birth.
The soil split open, releasing a flood of silver light as faint silhouettes began forming within the mist. The next vessel's pod had begun to awaken—its petals fluttering like breaths.
"Easy," Ezra whispered, palms raised. "It's just a child."
Cobi's heart slammed hard against his ribs. He knelt, reaching through the light—
And the ground exploded.
The pulse knocked them backward as the healing light turned green and harsh. From above, black rain began to fall, every drop hissing when it touched the dirt.
Through the chaos came one single word, whispered through every blade of grass:
"Brother."
Cobi looked up through the storm. Over the ridge, silhouetted in emerald lightning, Jace stood watching him—eyes like glass, calm as divinity.
Neither spoke.
Neither had to.
The earth between them pulsed once—alive, ancient—and the race for the child's awakening began.
Would you like the next chapter to show the confrontation from Jace's perspective, revealing how Gia manipulates it into a "test of faith," or stay with Cobi and the three vessels as they fight to save the little girl before Jace reaches her?