The fruits shimmered with lies. Cat plucked one—a translucent orb veined with gold—and bit into its brittle skin. Visions flooded her: Kieran whole and laughing, Daelen tending sunlit fields, herself unmarked by blight or void. The fruit’s nectar burned like regret. *“You could have this,”* the tree whispered, its roots coiled around her ankles. *If you prune the rot. If you abandon the pact.* She spat out the seeds. “Liar.” But the next fruit showed the Tower’s machines reduced to rubble, the Absence curled peacefully at her feet. Its promise hung heavier. ---**The Engineer’s Gambit** He arrived cloaked in deep one scales, his breath reeking of blight-engineered decay. “They call me Alaric,” he said, peeling back his hood to reveal a face stitched with luminous thread. “Last of the Tower’s true architects. You… *irritant*.” Cat’s blight surged, but Alaric raised a device—a spider-legged contraption that hissed and latched onto her shadow. “Your power is a borrowed knif

The forge awoke hungry. It grew from the obsidian seed in a single night—a grotesque spire of blackened veins and molten glass, its chambers pulsing like a heart. Villagers whispered that its flames could reshape flesh, its smoke carried the voices of the dead. Cat approached at dawn, her blight-armor sizzling in the heat. Inside, walls dripped with silver slag that formed words as it cooled: *REMOLD. REPURPOSE. REPENT.* The Absence trailed her, its child-sized body (newly sprouted limbs, too many joints) clutching a memory-bundle. **“It wants stories,”** it lisped, tossing the bundle into the flames. The forge roared, vomiting a sword etched with Kieran’s face. “That’s not helpful,” Cat muttered. **“Neither are you,”** Daelen’s storm-child giggled, materializing in the smoke. His form flickered—a boy of ash and lightning, eyes two collapsing stars. **“But you’re all we have.”** ---**Hive** The loyalists’ scars *itched*. By noon, the prismatic marks on their skin had gr

The earth groaned. By dawn, half the village square had collapsed into a gaping maw of knotted roots. They pulsed like arteries, their labyrinthine tunnels exhaling whispers that lured the curious. Old Thom vanished first, chasing his dog into the dark. Then the miller’s twins, drawn by a song only they could hear. Mara pressed her ear to the ground. “The roots are *humming*.” Daelen hovered above the fissure, stormless hands clenched. “Seal it.” But the villagers knelt instead, chanting his storm-name—*Thunderskin, Skybreaker*—as roots coiled around their ankles. ---**Storm-God’s Price** They built him an altar of shattered mirrors. Daelen’s veins flickered with borrowed lightning as offerings piled high: blight-stained toys, jars of storm-rain, locks of hair. “Stop this,” he demanded, but his voice carried thunder, not plea. A child touched his cloak. “Will you bless our crops, Thunderskin?” He recoiled. Compassion felt distant, buried under layers of static. Th

The coordinates burned in Ollie’s mind. He’d pressed his ear to the obsidian-gold sapling when Cat’s voice slipped through—a hum of blight and static. *“Follow the dead stars,”* she murmured. Numbers etched themselves behind his eyelids: *56.7° N, 23.5° W.* “It’s a map,” Ollie announced at the village council. “The sapling wants us to dig.” Daelen frowned. “Or it’s a trap.” Mara’s vines twitched. “Since when do you doubt Cat?” The sapling shivered, its whispers sharpening into a plea. ---**Voluntary Vines** Jyn was first. He swallowed a mirror-petal, flinching as his veins glowed gold. By dusk, his shadow-braids returned—stronger, sharper. “I can control it this time!” he insisted, slicing a boulder clean. Others followed. The baker drank root sap, her hands oozing healing nectar. The weaver ate a storm-seed, his hair crackling with tame lightning. “This is different,” they argued. “We’re choosing our power.” Daelen watched, storm-eyes wary. “Choice didn’t save

She arrived as the sun drowned in prismatic smog, her silhouette stretched thin by the warped light of the sapling’s grove. The voluntary mutants gathered first, their altered bodies thrumming in discordant harmony. Jyn’s shadow-braids slithered across the soil like eager serpents, drawn to the architect’s opalescent gown. **“Look how you’ve *bloomed*,”** she crooned, trailing a finger along Jyn’s jaw. Her touch left frostbitten patterns that glowed faintly, like veins of ore. **“But thorns need pruning. Let me hone you.”** Jyn’s eyes fogged over, pupils dilating into black mirrors. His shadow-braids lashed outward, snaring the baker’s wrists as she reached for her nectar-dripping knives. “Join her,” he intoned, voice stripped of its boyish crackle. “She’ll sand our rough edges.” Mara lunged, vines erupting from her sleeves to yank him back. “Jyn, *fight*!” The architect’s laughter chimed like shattering crystal. Mist seeped from her pores—iridescent and cloyingly sweet—coi