Chapter 14 #2
“I also deserve a tearful reunion. I also deserve to be told I was missed. I also—”
“Peeble.” I reach out and scoop them off the branch, cupping them carefully against my collarbone. “I literally said I missed you first.”
“Yes, but then you immediately moved on to kissing the tall one, and I was left sitting on a branch like a decorative afterthought. I have feelings, Elle. Complex, layered feelings.”
Kaelren hasn’t set me down yet. I’m still wrapped around him, and he doesn’t seem inclined to let go.
Peeble is nestled against my collarbone, their shell warm.
The three of us stand there in a sunlit grove in the middle of impossible nowhere, and for one perfect, suspended moment, everything is okay.
Then someone else clears their throat from the edge of the clearing.
Kaelren’s entire body changes in a heartbeat.
He sets me down fast. Not roughly, but with the quick precision of someone whose instincts have been on edge for months.
Then he turns, putting himself between me and whatever is behind us.
The air cools as his corruption rises. Shadows gather around his hands. The marks along his skin darken from their usual violet to nearly black.
His stance settles into something lethal. Weight forward. Shoulders squared. Ready.
I peer around his arm.
Two figures stand at the treeline.
The first is tall and willowy; their skin textured like bark. Their eyes glow a soft, steady amber. Robes made of living moss drape over their frame, shifting through shades of green with each breath.
Flowers bloom in the grass around their feet. Small white ones that open and close in a slow, steady rhythm.
The Sage.
I recognize them immediately. From Vyn Hollow. From the Thornwood. From the first time they examined my marks and informed me I was both a person and a specimen.
I startle when I notice the second figure.
Thalia.
She stands a little behind the Sage, arms crossed like she’s been watching the entire reunion unfold. Green eyes. Dark hair falling past her shoulders. Bare feet planted in the grass, like she’s spent most of her life walking without shoes.
Her clothes are simple. Linen, dark pants, a loose shirt that moves easily in the breeze.
She looks completely at home here.
Kaelren relaxes. Slightly.
The corruption around him fades but doesn’t disappear. Shadows still linger around his hands.
“Thalia,” he says.
There’s recognition in his voice. No surprise.
He knows her.
I look between them. “How do you know her?”
Kaelren scowls. His usual scowl. The one that means he has information he didn’t share and is irritated about being called out on it.
“She showed up in one of the iterations,” he says. “Guiding me toward you. Working with—”
He cuts his eyes toward the Sage.
“—them.”
“The Sage has been meddling,” he adds. The word sounds like it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. “From the beginning. Every breadcrumb. Every convenient crossing point. Every time Thalia appeared at exactly the right moment was clearly orchestrated.”
He glances between them again.
The Sage shows no reaction to the accusation. They watch us the way they have always watched me. Not at us, but through us, as if the surface of a person is only a thin layer over whatever truly interests them.
I turn my attention to Thalia.
She studies me right back.
There’s something different in the way she holds herself. Not the calm, cryptic composure I’m used to from her. Something closer to nerves.
She’s been playing the role of a mysterious guide for as long as I’ve known her. Appearing at the right moment, delivering a line that sounds important, then disappearing before anyone can ask questions.
Standing here in a quiet clearing, she looks younger.
Less certain.
“Where are we?” I ask. Might as well start with the basics, since nobody here seems inclined to volunteer information without a direct question.
The Sage gestures. A slow sweep of their moss-draped arm that takes in the grove, the beach behind us, the impossible sky above.
“A pocket,” they say. “A fold in the fabric between places. You might think of it as a room inside the walls of a house. Not part of any one room, but reachable from all of them if you know where the door is.”
“The Void Between Stars,” Kaelren says.
“Within it, yes.”
The Sage’s amber eyes move between us.
“No time passes here. No iteration can claim this space. It is the only place in existence where all of you could meet without tearing a hole in what remains of reality.”
They pause.
“Our window is brief. The pocket is already degrading.”
Their gaze sharpens.
“So I will be direct.”
I glance at Kaelren.
He gives the smallest nod. The kind that says he doesn’t like this either, but the Sage isn’t wrong.
Peeble, still tucked against my collarbone, goes unusually quiet.
“You are going to Iteration Nine,” the Sage says.
“Iteration Nine is where the cycle broke,” the Sage says, voice calm. “The first nine iterations were linear. One after another. Each one failed and reset.”
Kaelren’s brow tightens slightly.
“Nine didn’t?”
“Correct.” The Sage inclines their head. “And in refusing to collapse, it cracked reality. Every parallel branch you have walked through since then is a fragment. Pieces thrown outward by the force of Iteration Nine holding on when it should have ended.”
Before I can ask the question forming in my head, Thalia steps forward.
“You were moving through the natural progression of the timelines.”
She nods toward Kaelren.
“Kaelren was the one experiencing the parallels.”
The distinction lands heavily between us.
“But Iteration Nine held,” I say, knowing I have a dozen questions I need answered.
“Iteration Nine held.” Thalia replies as she steps forward.
“Iteration Nine didn’t just survive the collapse,” Thalia says. “The people there refused to accept defeat. They have been able to hold the line long enough to stabilize what was left and build something new.”
She looks at me, and those green eyes are full of things I’m only beginning to understand.
“They call it the Verdance.”
I glance at Kaelren to see if he recognizes the name, but he is simply staring at Thalia like he’s waiting for an explanation himself.
“It’s a city,” Thalia continues. “Built from free Bloom magic. Not the controlled, corrupted version Auradelle weaponized, but the raw source. After the crack, the people of Iteration Nine learned to work with it. They grew walls that heal themselves. Streets that shift around threats. An entire infrastructure that responds to the people living inside it.”
A city that grows.
I think of Jo’s garden. The way the roses always seemed to know where the sunlight would fall. The way the soil shifted and settled around whatever she planted next.
Verdance sounds like that.
Just…scaled up to something enormous.
“Thalia governs the Verdance,” the Sage says. “She and a council. They have held it together through conditions that would have broken most civilizations many times over.”
Thalia’s jaw tightens at the word held, like it’s doing a lot of work to cover what it actually costs.
“The Verdance is still standing,” she says.
“But it’s strained. Every time a parallel branch collapses, the shockwave hits us.
Partial resets. Walls we rebuilt last week are rubble again.
We patch and repair and brace for the next one, and the next one always comes. ”
Kaelren pulls me against him, arms tightening, as if the threat were here in front of us.
“And the collapses are accelerating,” Kaelren says. It isn’t a question.
“Yes,” Thalia’s voice is level, but her hands are clenched at her sides. “When I left to find you, we would experience the shock every few months. Now it’s weeks, sometimes days.”
I take that in. A city held together by living magic and stubborn determination, getting hit by shockwaves from collapsing realities more and more often.
“But the branches aren’t the only threat,” I say. I can feel it in the way Thalia is choosing her words. Like there’s something bigger sitting underneath everything she’s told us.
Thalia and the Sage exchange a look. It’s brief. The kind that passes between people who have already had the conversation and are making sure they still agree.
“No,” the Sage says. “The collapsing branches are a symptom. The true danger manifests when reality weakens enough for the dead iterations to bleed through the walls of Iteration Nine.”
They pause, and the flowers at their feet stop their rhythmic opening. The grove itself seems to hold its breath.
“We call it the Cathedral,” Thalia says.
“Dun, dun, dun,” Peeble suddenly pipes in from nowhere. They look around, taking in our exasperated glances. “What? It felt like the perfect dramatic moment!”
“It manifests during the Bloomfall Moon,” Thalia continues, ignoring Peebles' antics. “There’s a lunar cycle in Iteration Nine once every few months. The moon takes on a violet color, and the boundary between iterations thins to almost nothing. That’s when the bleed is worst and the Cathedral appears. ”
“Appears from where?” I ask.
“From the dead iterations.” Thalia’s voice stays steady, the words practiced from saying them too many times. “It’s built from the wreckage of collapsed branches. A moving structure. Part Bloom, part creature. Vines, thorns, and whatever remains from the worlds that didn’t survive.”
She pauses.
“During the Bloomfall Moon, the boundary thins. The Cathedral crosses through and moves toward the Verdance.”
Kaelren goes very still beside me. Through the bond, I feel something sharp and complicated move through him, like recognition layered with a revulsion that goes deeper than he’s letting show.
“That’s what I saw in Iteration Fourteen.”
Thalia gives him a solemn nod.
“The Cathedral has a core,” the Sage says. “A center intelligence that drives it. And every cycle, during every Bloomfall Moon, the Verdance sends people to try to reach it. To end the siege at its source.”
“And?” I ask, though the answer is already written on Thalia’s face.
“No one has ever gotten close enough.” Her voice is quiet but strained.
“The Cathedral adapts. It learns from every attempt. The outer defenses are bad enough. Vine armor. Root constructs. Petal mouths that can swallow a person whole. But there is something deeper that we do not understand. People go in and do not come back, and the Cathedral grows larger with what it takes.”
Silence follows.
The grove shimmers faintly around us. A reminder that this pocket between places will not last much longer.
“How many attempts?” Kaelren asks.
Thalia meets his eyes. “Enough that I’ve stopped counting.”
“Well, that’s reassuring! Can’t wait for this party. I’m sure it’s a real riot. Literally,” Peeble chuckles at themself.
The Sage cuts Peeble a glare that shuts them up.
“The next Bloomfall Moon is close,” the Sage says. “When you arrive in the Verdance, you will have limited time before the Cathedral manifests again. Thalia and her council will brief you on the full situation. What I need you to understand now, before we run out of space to stand in, is this—”
The Sage’s amber eyes hold mine. Steady. Ancient. Absolute.
“If Iteration Nine falls this time, there is nothing left. No resets. No branches. No chances. The Rootline dies. Wynmire dies. Even Earth goes dark. Permanently.”
I feel Kaelren’s hand find mine. His fingers lace through mine and grip hard, and I grip back just as hard, neither of us looks at the other because we don’t need to. The bond says everything.
“What is different about this time?” I dare to ask, already having an inkling why I always find myself in these godforsaken situations.
The Sage gives me a sad smile. “Because you two are the ones who broke the cycle and stopped the clock. Everything is now in stasis.”
Of fucking course.
“So we go to the Verdance,” I say. “And we figure out how to do what no one else has done.”
Thalia looks at me for a long moment. Something moves behind her green eyes, a flicker of emotion she clamps down before I can read it. “The Verdance will welcome you,” she says. “The city knows who you are. It’s been waiting for you.”
The air shifts. Subtle at first, a shimmer at the edges of my vision, like heat haze on a highway in July. The copper-trunked trees flicker, their blossoms fading in and out of focus.
“We’re out of time,” Thalia says, and she’s already moving closer to us.
The grove shimmers harder. The trees are transparent now. The beach behind us has gone watery and thin, the teal ocean visible one moment and gone the next. The warm, living air is cooling, thinning, losing its pulse.
The Sage watches the grove dissolve around us, and something in their expression shifts into a look of sadness. The flowers at their feet are wilting, curling closed one by one, petals going papery and thin.
“The Verdance awaits you,” the Sage says, their voice carrying through the wind. “Thalia will see you through the threshold.”
The crack in the air widens. Behind it, I glimpse green light. I feel Kaelren’s arms go around my waist, pulling me close to him. Feel Peeble dig their legs into my shirt. Feel Thalia’s shoulder brush against my arm as she moves closer.
Then the pocket collapses around us. The tropical paradise folds in on itself like a paper lantern being crushed, light and color and warmth compressing to a single point.
The Sage’s hand sweeps down.
Darkness.