Verdant Abyss Chronicles

Haiyu's scream tore through the ruined voidship, a sound so raw it vibrated in Moyan's teeth. The black sphere at the chamber's core pulsed in response, tendrils of sickly green light lashing out like serpents. They didn't strike Moyan - instead, they wrapped around the gravity staff fused to Haiyu's trembling hands. Her back arched violently as the staff's glow intensified, burning through her sleeves to reveal arms now threaded with luminous veins.

Memories poured from her eyes in liquid streaks, coalescing above the sphere's dark surface:

A child's small hands - his hands - clumsily weaving vine bracelets under Haiyu's patient guidance.

Jian Luo's triumphant grin after his first solo hunt, blood and pollen smeared across his cheekbones.

A girl with Haiyu's sharp nose and wide eyes vanishing into the jungle's embrace, the distant hiss of harvesters echoing behind her.

Moyan lunged forward, his boots slipping on the moss-slick floor. "Haiyu!"

The Rootheart's vines erupted from his spine, coiling around his wrists like living manacles. "She took the staff willingly," it whispered, voice thick with something almost like reverence. "The Warden's duty is to remember... so others may forget."

Across the chamber, Kainan's crucified body stirred. His remaining eye - the color of storm clouds - focused on Moyan through a curtain of matted hair. His cracked lips parted, not to speak, but to release a single glowing mote that drifted toward the pulsating sphere.

The moment it made contact, time shattered.

---

The scent of crushed loam and smoldering temple incense filled Moyan's nose.

One heartbeat he stood in the ruined voidship; the next, he knelt on sun-warmed stone in a thriving Celestial Vine sanctuary. Dappled sunlight filtered through an unbroken canopy overhead, painting shifting patterns across chanting priests in verdant robes. At the center of the courtyard, an enormous flowering vine throbbed with energy - not the Surge's corrupt glow, but something purer, almost golden.

His father stood before the sacred vine, younger but no less fierce, the gravity staff's haft gripped white-knuckled in both hands. Sweat darkened the back of his hunting leathers.

"You don't understand what you're awakening," Kainan growled.

The Oracle - her face still fully human, her dark eyes still her own - pressed a palm to the flowering vine's shuddering surface. "The World Will dreams only of protection. We are but its voi—"

A shriek tore the sky asunder.

Moyan's vision fragmented as the memory accelerated - the first voidship's burning hull crashing through the canopy, tendrils like liquid shadow bursting from its ruptured belly. He watched in horror as they burrowed into vines and flesh alike, priest and plant screaming in unison as crystalline growths erupted beneath their skin.

Kainan fought through the chaos, the staff carving arcs of distorted space that sent harvesters spinning into trees. He reached the Oracle just as the tendrils reached her lips.

"Do it," she begged, her fingers already elongating into twitching sensor nodes.

The staff fell.

Her body disintegrated into a swirl of golden light.

---

Moyan gasped back into the present as a harvester's claw punched through the chamber wall, spraying rusted metal shards.

Jian Luo slumped against the pulsating sphere, his normally tanned skin now sallow under the glow of his corrupted veins. Each pulse matched the sphere's rhythm exactly. "So let me get this straight," he coughed, blood flecking his lips. "Your brilliant father's plan was to weaponize amnesia?" A weak chuckle. "Can't say I blame him. I'd pay good money to forget this shitshow."

Kainan's gaze locked onto Moyan, the unspoken choice hanging between them like a drawn blade:

Remember everything and be paralyzed by grief.

Or forget just enough to keep fighting.

Haiyu's body floated above the sphere now, her braid unraveling in the energy currents. As the staff's light intensified, Moyan saw the brutal truth in flashing fragments - each previous Warden had been someone who loved too deeply to let go. Their memories became weapons. Their pain became armor.

The first harvester's tendrils scraped across the corroded floor toward Jian Luo's bleeding form, leaving acidic burns in the metal.

Moyan raised his knife, the serpent carvings burning white-hot.

The Rootheart's whisper slithered through his bones:

"Choose."