Chapter 33 Elle #2
“They’re Root channels, corrupted and purified in endless cycles until they exist between states.
Neither Root nor Bloom, but both and neither.
They’ll take your essence—everything that makes you Elle—and spread it through the Heartspire itself.
You’ll become the building, and it will become you. A living bridge between worlds.”
“That’s… impossible…”
“Your grandmother thought so, too. She ran before we could test it. Smart woman, in her way. She knew she wasn’t strong enough.
Your mother might have survived it—she had the strength, the will—but she chose death instead.
Selfish to the end. She could have saved the realm, but she chose to save herself from the pain. ”
The conduits began to pulse. Green light flowed through them in a rhythm. I felt the magic pulling at me, trying to spread my consciousness outward. My thoughts scattered. My sense of self began to fray at the edges, reaching beyond my body into the Heartspire’s ancient stones.
“Stop!” I screamed. The word echoed strangely, coming not just from my mouth but from the walls, the floor, the air itself. My voice was spreading, becoming part of the building.
“We’re just beginning,” Auradelle said, moving to a panel of levers and crystalline dials set into the chamber wall. “When the Convergence peaks, when reality is at its thinnest, I’ll force the final merger. You’ll become the Bloom’s living key, whether you choose it or not.”
Through the bond, muffled but still there, I felt Kaelren’s rage spike to levels that shouldn’t be survivable.
He was coming. Gods, he was almost here, corruption spreading with every step, becoming something monstrous to save me.
I could feel him tearing through guards, leaving trails of decay in his wake.
“Yes,” Auradelle said, apparently able to read my thoughts through the Bloom’s connection.
“Let him come. His corruption will make the perfect catalyst. When he arrives, when he sees you like this, his rage will complete what we’ve started.
The Root and Bloom will merge in a conflagration of fury and desperation. ”
“You’re using us.”
“I’m using everything. Every piece on the board, every fragment of power, every drop of blood spilled in this worthless war.
The realm has been dying for longer than you’ve been alive.
Longer than your mother was alive. The balance was broken before the first Crown took the throne, and every attempt to fix it has only made it worse. ”
He began adjusting the controls, pulling levers and turning dials.
Each adjustment sent fresh waves of agony through me as the conduits dug deeper, pulled harder.
But through the pain, I started to understand what he was really saying.
This wasn’t just about power or control.
He genuinely believed he was saving the realm, even if it meant destroying everything in it first.
“Do you… have any idea… what it’s like… being tortured by a madman who thinks he’s a hero?”
He actually paused at that. “Every madman thinks he’s the hero of his own story, child.
The only difference is that I have the power to make my story a reality.
I have the will to do what must be done, no matter the cost. Your mother understood that.
That’s why she chose death. She knew that sometimes the hero has to become the monster. ”
Mora appeared at the edge of my vision, trying to push past the guards. They held her back, but she kept trying, kept reaching for me. Blood ran from where she’d hit her head, and her eyes were desperate. She was humming something, barely audible over the chamber’s echoes. An old song of some sort.
The conduits pulsed harder. And then something happened that Auradelle hadn’t expected.
My marks didn’t just spread—they began to change. The golden vines started producing actual flowers, tiny blooms no bigger than my thumbnail. They opened and closed with my heartbeat, releasing pollen that caught the green light and turned it gold.
“What?” Auradelle moved closer, studying the transformation. His eyes had gone wide. “That’s not possible. The texts said—”
“Maybe your texts are shit,” I gasped out. “Maybe you can’t predict everything. Maybe you’re just a sad old man who’s spent so long staring at corruption he’s forgotten what beauty looks like.”
He slapped me, hard enough to make my ears ring. But I laughed, because what else was there to do? I was dying or transforming or both, strapped to a nightmare machine while my marks bloomed impossible flowers, and somehow that was funny.
“What is that girl doing?” Auradelle demanded, finally noticing Mora’s humming.
“Singing, my lord,” a guard replied. “Should we stop her?”
Auradelle considered, then shook his head. “No. Let her waste her voice on useless sentiment. It changes nothing. The Convergence is nearly here.”
But he was wrong. I could feel it changing something. Mora’s song resonated with something deep in the stone, and my marks were blooming faster, releasing more pollen. Where the pollen touched the conduits, they flickered, their green light stuttering.
Through the bond, clearer now, I felt Kaelren in the tunnels below. Rage incarnate, corruption spreading fast, his humanity dissolving with each guard he killed. But underneath the rage, I felt something else.
Love.
Desperate, furious, impossible love that defied patterns and iterations and everything that said we were doomed to fail. Love that was willing to become monstrous if it meant saving me. Love that didn’t care about balance or realms or the proper order of things.
And trust. He trusted me. Trusted that I’d told him the truth about the seed, that I’d given him the key to breaking this cycle. Even now, bound and being torn apart, I felt his absolute certainty in me.
I sent everything I had through the bond—not words, just feeling. Trust. Hope. Love that burned brighter than any corruption.
“Come on,” I whispered, knowing he’d feel it even if he couldn’t hear the words. “Come find me, you overprotective asshole.”
And somewhere in the darkness below, I felt him roar my name.