The black water swallowed Lin Moyan's ankles like a living thing, thick and heavy, clinging to his skin with unnatural warmth. Each step forward sent ripples cascading across the pool's surface, distorting the floating doorways that shimmered just ahead. The roots embedded in his arm pulsed in time with the newborn seed's heartbeat against his palm, their golden glow casting eerie reflections on the chamber walls. Behind him, the awakened Wardens stood motionless, their hollow golden eyes tracking his every movement.
Haiyu's fingers brushed his elbow—light, fleeting, but weighted with unspoken warning. Her healed wrist twisted slightly as she signed against his damp sleeve, the motion sharp and deliberate.
They test your worth.
Jian Luo lingered at the rear, his breath ragged. The webbing between his fingers had spread nearly to the second knuckle, his nails hardened into dark, curved claws that clicked together with every twitch. His voice came out rough, strained. "If this is a test, someone forgot to hand out the damn questions."
The water rose to Moyan's waist as he pressed forward, its consistency shifting unpredictably—sometimes thin as rainwater, other times thick as clotting blood. The doors loomed ahead, their liquid surfaces flickering with visions:
The first door showed the ruins of the Celestial Vine Sect, but transformed. Stone towers lay wrapped in flowering vines, their surfaces pulsing with the same golden light that now ran through Moyan's veins.
The second door revealed an endless underground chamber where thousands of silver seeds hung suspended in root-woven nets, each one throbbing like a captured star.
The third door depicted a child's hands planting a sapling in black soil, the image wavering as if seen through heat haze.
The roots on Moyan's arm twitched violently, their tips curling toward the second door.
The First Revelation
His fingers breached the liquid surface.
The vision swallowed him whole.
He stood in a cavern so vast its ceiling vanished into darkness. Bioluminescent roots wove intricate catwalks between stalactites, their glow casting shifting patterns on the stone below. And there, arranged in perfect rows, stood thousands of Wardens—not corpses, not the preserved figures from the pool, but living bodies held in stasis by root tendrils.
A figure moved among them.
The black-haired child from his visions.
Up close, they were neither boy nor girl, their features blurred at the edges like a half-remembered dream. Their small hands worked with eerie precision, adjusting root placements with the care of a gardener tending prized roses.
One Warden stirred as the child passed—a man with Jian Luo's sharp features but Kainan's bearing. His lips parted, whispering a single word that made the child freeze.
"Nyxara."
The vision shattered.
Moyan staggered back into the present, gasping. Blood trickled from his nostrils, striking the water's surface in perfect crimson spheres that floated rather than dispersed.
The chitin-clad Warden's voice cut through the silence. "The past weighs heavy on those not meant to bear it."
The Second Revelation
Haiyu moved before Moyan could steady himself.
Her damaged wrist plunged into the third door without hesitation.
The vision seized her instantly.
The child stood in a clearing beneath an alien sky, their hands pressed against the trunk of the First Tree—its girth wider than a watchtower, its branches scraping constellations that didn't belong to this world.
A dagger flashed in their grip.
Not an attack. A ceremony.
The blade sank into the roots. The tree shuddered. Bark peeled back in layers, revealing not wood but flesh beneath. The wound pulsed like an open mouth, whispering words that made the child weep even as they continued their work.
Moyan's roots burned, the pain yanking him back to the present. Haiyu stood rigid, her pupils dilated until only thin rings of brown remained. Her lips shaped a soundless name.
Kainan.
The Third Revelation
The pool erupted.
Not with heat, but with movement—countless root tendrils breaking the surface like the grasping hands of drowning men. They coiled around Moyan's legs, not restraining but guiding, dragging him toward the first door.
This time, when his fingers touched the liquid surface, there was no vision.
The door swallowed him whole.
One moment, he stood in the chamber. The next, he knelt in the ruins of the Celestial Vine Sect.
But these were no ordinary ruins.
The stones had softened, their edges blurred like melting wax. Vines coiled over every surface, their silver flowers identical to the one in his journal. And the bodies—
Dozens of them.
Perfectly preserved.
Their skin had turned to polished wood, their mouths stretched open in silent songs. Each bore a single silver seed placed carefully on their tongue.
The chitin-clad Warden stood before him, though he hadn't seen her move. Her clawed hands cradled something small and struggling—the black-haired child, their features now sharp with fear.
"The cycle must continue," the Warden intoned. "Choose."
Moyan understood then.
This was no test.
It was an execution.
The Weight of Choice
The roots on his arm exploded outward, not in attack but in desperate communion. Golden light flooded the ruined temple, illuminating carvings hidden beneath the vines—
A timeline of the Verdant Abyss.
Not cycles.
Chapters.
The First Tree's planting. The Serpent's arrival. The Wardens' creation. And at the end, a blank space waiting to be filled.
The child stopped struggling. Their eyes—an impossible shade of root-brown—locked onto Moyan's.
"You see now," they whispered with a voice too old for their form. "We've done this before."
The vision collapsed.
Moyan found himself back in the chamber, his hand still outstretched toward the first door. The other Wardens had formed a perfect circle around them, their golden eyes unblinking.
Haiyu's fingers dug into his arm. Jian Luo's breathing came in ragged, wet gasps.
And the seed in Moyan's palm?
It had begun to sprout.