The silence shattered like thin ice underfoot.
Moyan felt the vibration before he heard the sound – a deep, resonant crack that traveled up through the water and into his bones. The pool's surface fractured into geometric patterns, each fragment reflecting the chamber's eerie glow like a broken mirror. Then the Wardens' eyes opened. All of them. In perfect unison.
Their eyes held no pupils, only that same golden light now pulsing through Moyan's veins.
The chamber trembled as they began to rise. Water streamed from their bodies in glistening sheets, revealing root-woven limbs that moved with unnatural grace. Some still wore remnants of ancient armor – breastplates of blackened chitin that pulsed like living tissue, helms of woven thorns that had grown into their skulls. Others were nearly indistinguishable from the roots themselves, their human forms barely recognizable beneath layers of symbiotic growth.
Haiyu's hand clamped around Moyan's forearm with crushing force. Her nails bit deep enough to draw blood, the pain shockingly bright against the surreal horror unfolding before them. She didn't sign. Didn't need to. The wild animal terror in her widened eyes said everything:
Run.
But the roots on Moyan's arm had other plans.
They lashed outward with whipcrack speed, embedding themselves into the chamber's organic floor. Golden light pulsed through the petrified wood, racing in intricate patterns toward the central pedestal where the seed had shattered. The reaction was instantaneous – the rising Wardens froze mid-ascent, their heads turning toward Moyan with mechanical precision.
Jian Luo broke the surface beside them with a gasp, silver-streaked hair plastered across his face. Water streamed from the webbing between his fingers as he wiped his eyes. "Well," he rasped, taking in the scene. "That's new."
The nearest Warden – a woman clad in that living chitin armor – spoke without moving her lips. The words vibrated directly in Moyan's skull, each syllable resonating in his teeth:
"The cycle is broken."
The First Test: Trial of Flesh
The chitin-clad Warden moved first.
She crossed the pool in three strides, the water parting before her like a curtain before a queen. Up close, Moyan could see the terrible intimacy of her armor – not worn, but grown. The black plates fused seamlessly with her flesh, rising and falling with each breath. Her fingers ended in razor-sharp points, the nails hardened into glossy black claws.
"You carry the mark," she intoned, voice echoing from the chamber walls as if a hundred throats spoke at once. "But do you carry the weight?"
Her strike came faster than thought.
Moyan barely twisted aside in time, feeling the wind of her passing claws part the hair at his temple. The roots on his arm reacted before he could – lashing out to wrap around her wrist in a glowing helix. Where they touched, golden light flared, and for one blinding instant, he saw:
A battlefield where trees grew from corpses, their roots threading through eye sockets and gaping mouths.
A silver seed being pressed into unwilling hands by a man with Kainan's eyes but not his face.
A choice presented as command, as inevitability, as the only path forward.
The Warden wrenched free with a sound like tearing bark. "You see but don't understand."
The Second Test: Trial of Memory
Jian Luo stepped between them, his webbed hands raised in mock surrender. The transformation had progressed further – his pupils now vertical slits, his veins visible beneath silver-tinged skin like rivers under moonlight. When the Warden turned her gaze on him, he didn't flinch – just grinned with too many teeth.
"You," she breathed. "The broken one."
Jian Luo's grin didn't waver. "Takes one to know one."
The other Wardens began closing in, their movements unnaturally synchronized. Moyan counted at least thirty – some nearly human, others more root than flesh. One had vines growing through his eye sockets, the tips flowering where his pupils should be. Another's mouth had fused shut, words spilling instead from carved glyphs along his collarbones.
The chamber's air grew thick with the scent of ozone and wet earth, pressing against Moyan's skin like a living thing. His lungs burned with each breath, the oxygen somehow thinner, as if they'd climbed a mountain in those few terrifying moments.
Haiyu moved suddenly, pressing the newborn seed into Moyan's hands. It had grown warm, its cracks pulsing with inner light like a heartbeat seen through skin. When his fingers closed around it, the visions came harder this time, striking with the force of physical blows:
Vision One: The chitin-clad Warden standing where Haiyu now stood, receiving the seed from a man with Kainan's eyes but Jian Luo's smile.
Vision Two: That same Warden plunging the seed into her own chest, roots exploding from her mouth and eyes as she dissolved into the pool with a scream that shook the world.
Vision Three: A child – the same black-haired figure from before – watching it all with ancient eyes, their small hands already marked with the beginnings of root patterns.
The Third Test: Trial of Choice
The roots on Moyan's arm blazed to life, their light so intense it cast the Wardens' shadows huge and wavering against the chamber walls. The chitin-clad woman froze, her clawed hand inches from his throat.
"You," she whispered. "You carry the true mark."
The other Wardens echoed the words, their voices overlapping in a haunting chorus:
"True mark."
"True mark."
"True mark."
The chamber shook violently, water sloshing over their feet in waves that defied gravity, running upward along the walls before falling again as rain. Above them, the cosmic wound in the ceiling pulsed like a heartbeat, black tendrils snaking downward in slow, searching motions.
Then the pool's water began rising in spiraling columns – not random, but forming deliberate shapes that resolved into:
Doors.
Dozens of them, each formed from liquid and light, each showing a different fragment of the Verdant Abyss. Some showed familiar locations – the Celestial Vine Sect's ruins overgrown with new, stranger vegetation; the Maw of Titans now filled with clear water rather than black ichor. Others displayed places Moyan had never seen – a city of living wood where towers bent like saplings in wind; a garden where the trees grew upside down, their roots cradling miniature stars.
The chitin-clad Warden lowered her hand. "Choose."
Moyan looked to Haiyu. Her face was unreadable, but her hands moved slowly, shaping a single word against his wrist where the blood from her nails still welled:
Remember.
Jian Luo wiped blood from his split lip, his elongated tongue darting out to catch a stray drop. "Oh good. More choices."
The doors pulsed in time with the seed's glow, each beat sending ripples through the water at their feet. The roots on Moyan's arm pulled him forward – not toward any exit, but deeper into the chamber, where the water ran black with the weight of centuries and the oldest Wardens slept.