A single, skeletal hand shot from the earth, gripping Tari's ankle.
Not Kael's.
Not human.
Liora's mismatched eyes widened in dread.
Oh no...
He woke it up.
The skeletal hand squeezed Tari's ankle, its bones blackened as if burned centuries agoyet still moving, still hungry.
She kicked back, scrambling away just as the earth exploded upward.
It rose.
A figure of gnarled roots and bleached, broken bones, its body a grotesque fusion of dead wood and something that might have once been flesh. Its face if it could be called a face was a hollow mask of bark, split by a jagged maw that dripped thick, amber sap like saliva.
But worst of all were its eyes.
Or rather, the absence of them.
Two voids stared from its sockets, deeper than darkness, and when it spoke, the voice was the sound of a forest choking to death:
You watered my grave with blood, little heir… and now I am awake.
Liora staggered back, her hands clutching her head as the thing's voice seemed to echo inside her. No no, this isn't what was supposed to...
The creature tilted its head. You know me, don't you, child?
Tari saw the realization hit Liora like a physical blow.
The First Guardian, she whispered.
The thing's maw split wider grinning.
The first failure.
The truth crashed over Tari.
The Order hadn't just been burning Hollows to hide their experiments.
They'd been trying to starve this thing.
Because the corruption wasn't an accident.
It was a cage.
And Kael had just broken it.
---