Kael's mother stood silhouetted against the setting sun, her hands radiating the same gold as the Seed. The field around her was littered with the bones of hybrids, roses blooming through their ribs. Her gaze fixed on Older Kael, frail and crumbling, then on Young Kael, whose cobalt veins pulsed in time with the Seed embedded in Young Lira's chest.
"You've come to finish it," she said, her voice resonant with power. "But you'll need this." She opened her palm, revealing a shard of the Seed, jagged and throbbing.
Older Kael staggered forward. "You're alive. How?"
"The Seed preserved me. Made me its guardian." Her gold-lit eyes narrowed. "Destroy it, and I die. But so does the corruption." She turned to Young Kael. "Unless he takes my place."
Young Kael's veins flared. "No deals. We burn it and end this."
"You burn it," she said softly, "and the fire consumes her." She pointed to Young Lira, unconscious but breathing, the Seed's roots still burrowed into her heart.
Nyx stepped between them, dagger drawn. "What's stopping us from killing you and taking the shard?"
"Nothing," Kael's mother smiled. "But the Seed loves its guardians. Strike me, and it defends itself."
As if summoned, the ground erupted. Skeletal hands clawed upward, dragging Seed-spawned horrors into the light—monsters with rosette maws and eyes like shattered hourglasses. They screeched, a sound that aged the air itself.
Young Kael's dagger hand withered. He screamed, collapsing as cobalt veins devoured his arm. "It's in me! Get it out!"
Older Kael gripped his shoulder. "Stay with me. We'll fix this."
"Fix?" His mother laughed. "You broke time. Now it breaks you."
The monsters surged. Nyx and Mira fought back-to-back, but the horde was endless. Older Kael seized the Seed shard from his mother's hand. It seared his flesh, memories flooding him—Gideon's first incision into his mother's skin, her screams as the Seed took root, Lyra's birth from her stolen DNA.
"You let him do this," he rasped. "Why?"
"To save you." Her gold glow dimmed. "You were dying as a child. The Seed… it revived you. But it demanded a guardian. So Gideon made her."
A monster lunged. Older Kael instinctively raised the shard. Gold light erupted, reducing the creature to ash. Power surged through him—youthful, intoxicating, wrong.
"Stop!" Young Kael's voice cracked as his other arm mutated into a thorned claw. "You're becoming him!"
Nyx tackled a monster gnawing at Mira's leg. "Do something!"
Older Kael turned to his mother. "How do we end it?"
"Sacrifice," she said. "The Seed's guardian dies, and it crumbles. But it chooses a successor. Me… or you."
Young Lira stirred, her hand fusing with the Seed. "Kael…" Lyra's voice whispered through her. "Let me go."
The horde converged, encircling them. Older Kael gripped the shard. "If I become the guardian… the corruption ends?"
"No," his mother said. "It restarts. But you could control it. Shape time. Save them all."
Young Kael's mutation spread, his scream gurgling as thorns pierced his throat. Nyx severed the roots, but they regrew instantly. "Choose!"
Older Kael plunged the shard into his mother's chest.
Gold light exploded. Her body disintegrated, her final breath a sigh of relief. The Seed pulsed, roots retreating from Young Lira. The monsters crumbled, their screams fading.
But the shard in Older Kael's hand grew, fusing to his arm. Gold veins replaced his rot, his back straightening, his scars vanishing. Young Kael's mutations halted, leaving him gasping, half-human.
"What did you do?" Young Lira whispered.
Older Kael stared at his reflection in the shard—Gideon's face stared back. "What I had to."
The Seed's voice, now his voice, echoed:
"Welcome home, Guardian."