Chapter 301: The Echo RootI. One Year LaterThe spiral tree now stood tall enough to break the clouds.Its petals no longer shimmered with uncertainty—they shone like truth, pulsing with steady light that bathed the Grove in perpetual dawn.Eden was healing.The Rootborn were thriving.But Ko knew the silence meant only one thing:Something was coming.II. Strange SignalsIn the northern fringe—a dead zone untouched since the Binding—a scouting unit intercepted a signal.Not from Eden.Not from Sable.It was an unfamiliar frequency, carried on raw magnetic waves.Ryn studied the waveform.“It’s not memory. It’s not command code either. It’s... mimicry.”Ash leaned over her shoulder.“You think someone’s copying Eden?”Ryn’s lips tightened.“No.I think something is learning from it.”III. The Echo Root EmergesTwo days later, a patrol near the Rustline border vanished.When Ash arrived with a backup unit, all they found was a single thing growing out of the dead soil:A root.Coiled

Chapter 303: The Bloom BeyondI. Leaving Without PermissionThey didn’t wait for a Council vote.Ash and Ko slipped past the Grove’s border during the night, cloaked in memory-dampening shells and root-silencers.The spiral tree pulsed once as they passed—but didn’t stop them.It remembered the first time they defied Eden.It also remembered what came of it.At the edge of the Gray Zone, the Origin was waiting—its form more stable now, echoing Ko’s own silhouette as if mimicking trust.“You chose well,” it said, voice echoing both forward and backward in time.Ash grunted.“We didn’t choose.We answered.”II. The Vault Beneath the EarthThe Origin led them far beyond the boundaries of mapped territory.Past failed bloomfields.Through dead zones where the ground no longer remembered its name.And finally—to a valley where nothing grew.A scar in the soil.“Here lies Vault Zero,” the Origin said.“Eden’s ancestor. The first attempt.”Ko stared at the circular ridge.No doors.No interf

Chapter 305: Eden Under SiegeI. Breach at the Eastern RootwallIt began with a tremor—deep, rhythmic, like the beat of a buried heart.At first, the Rootwatch thought it was another spiral pulse.Then came the dust.The cracking of stone.And the scream of wood under pressure.The eastern rootwall split wide open.From the rupture emerged the Fractured Thorn—Rootborn hulks bearing sap-blades, memory-forged gauntlets, and vine-binders laced with stolen Sable fire.Ryn was first to respond.She issued a spiral lockdown and armed the kinetic wards, but the enemy came through the soil itself.“They’re not attacking like invaders,” she gasped.“They’re growing through us.”II. Spiral Tree AwakensThe spiral tree bent.Not in pain.In rage.Petals flared gold and red, releasing pulses that lit up the entire Grove.Dormant root-guards awakened—ancient constructs of light and memory once used in the first Eden wars.But even as they engaged, the Fractured Thorn adapted.One of them—marked wi

Chapter 307: The Spiral AccordI. The SummoningKo stood beneath the Spiral Tree, her palms stained with soil and memory. The Grove was quiet—for once, not from fear, but from anticipation.She had sent the signal to all factions:Eden’s Rootborn.The Fractured Thorn.The Silent Bloom.Even the councilors who once tried to exile her.No demands.No threats.Just one message.“Meet me where the first root cracked.We either grow forward—or fall alone.”To her surprise, they came.Some war-wounded.Some masked.Some still radiating fury.But they came.Even the Origin, half-formed and watching.Even Ryn.Even the Thorn leader with a fresh scar over one eye.II. The Seed Between WorldsKo held the Forgotten Core seed in her hands, now fully awakened.Its root had grown one inch in every direction—not just downward, but outward, through possibility itself.She raised it high.“This seed is not Eden.It is not Sable.It is before all of us.”The Fractured Thorn murmured.“A trick?”Ko met

Chapter 309: Vault SigmaI. A Journey WestwardFor weeks, the Grove debated.Some wanted to seal the new metal root—claim it was a trap.Others believed it to be a bridge to the truth.Ko didn’t argue either side.She simply prepared to leave.“If we don’t walk into the dark,” she said,“we can’t plant the light.”Ash volunteered first.Then Ryn.Three Unplanted joined—silent, skin etched with unknowable symbols.The Origin flickered in reluctantly.“You’ll find nothing but dead soil out there.”Ko looked over her shoulder at the silent spiral tree behind them.“We found life in worse places.”And then, they left Eden behind.II. The Wastes of SilenceThe journey was unlike any before.The soil was dry—not dead, but dreaming.The wind carried no scent of blossom, no whispers of memory.But the sky…The sky changed colors in places.Glitched.And once, Ash saw what looked like a tree—burning in reverse, fire growing downward.Ko noted it in her journal: “Possibility flare. Possibly a m