The room was a battlefield of splintered wood and shadow.Huddled behind the broken bed frame, Leonotis watched it all unfold—his knuckles around the oak sapling clutched to his chest.
He saw the sweat rolling down Jacqueline's temple, her braid coming loose as she fought to maintain her barrier. He saw Low, crouched low and snarling like a cornered beast, blood dripping from her lip and the dull shimmer of her shapeshift threatening to surface.
They were fighting—bleeding—for him.
For her—the Dryad whose memory still pulsed in the small, trembling sapling he held.
And the realization struck him like a hammer to the heart.
These people—his friends, his family—were risking everything for the weight he carried.
The deep, aching sorrow that had hollowed him out since her death began to churn. It mixed with something new. Something hot and feral and protective.
A rage that was no longer grief's twin, but its weapon.
The memory of her peaceful transformation—her face serene as she dissolved into green light—was torn apart by flashes of the Institute's cruelty. The screams. The blades. The burning wards that stripped away her bark layer by layer.
It was the same greed.The same cruel force.And now it was coming for them.
A spark flickered in Leonotis's eyes.
Then the spark became a blaze.
The green of life became the green of fury—a storm about to break.
He rose from his crouch, trembling from the inside out, his face carved into a mask of cold, focused wrath.
Every instinct screamed for him to hide. Every lesson he'd been taught whispered restraint.
But something older—something primal—roared louder.
"LEAVE! US! ALONE!"
His voice tore through the air like thunder, raw and desperate.
He slammed the root sword into the floorboards. The oak shaft hummed, its grain splintering under the sheer surge of power coursing through him.
The response was immediate.
A pulse of green—wild, blinding, untamed—burst outward from his body.
It wasn't the soft persuasion he'd used on the Dryad's vines, or the playful coaxing that made apple trees bloom.
This was wrath.
Nature's vengeance.A primal scream given form.
The magic didn't flow through the sword—it rejected it. Instead, it poured into the building itself.
The floorboards vibrated. The walls shuddered.
The entire inn groaned, a beast awakened from a long, painful sleep.
Then came the sound—like a thousand ligaments tearing at once.
Massive roots, black as charred bone and thick as a man's thigh, exploded from beneath the floorboards.
They twisted and writhed like serpents, lashing through the plaster and splintering timber with savage precision. The walls bulged outward, ceiling beams cracked, and the scent of raw earth filled the air.
In the hallway, the bounty hunters screamed.
The floor gave way beneath their boots. Roots coiled around their legs, dragging them downward. Armor plates cracked. Shields were ripped away and crushed into shrapnel.
One root, as sharp as a blade, slashed through the air and snatched a guard's sword mid-swing, twisting the steel into a grotesque spiral before flinging it aside.
Another coiled around a man's waist and slammed him into the ceiling so hard that the plaster rained down like snow.
The corridor transformed into a writhing cage of living wood—each movement accompanied by the sickening crunch of splintering bone and shrieking metal.
The hunters were no longer predators.They were prey.
Inside the room, Leonotis felt the world tilt. The floor cracked beneath his boots.
"Leonotis!" Jacqueline shouted, reaching for him.
But it was too late.
With a deafening CRACK, the floor collapsed completely.
For one frozen instant, they hung in the air.
Then gravity claimed them.
They plunged downward, swallowed by the collapsing floor and a storm of debris.
Splintered boards, shards of furniture, and clouds of choking dust surrounded them as they fell into the darkness below.
Leonotis clutched the sapling tight to his chest, curling around it as the impact hit.
They landed in the cellar with a jarring thud that knocked the breath from their lungs.
For a long, disorienting moment, there was only the sound of ringing ears, shifting rubble, and heavy breathing.
Darkness pressed in on all sides.
The air was thick with dust and the smell of damp earth.
Leonotis groaned, his shoulder throbbing, but his arms had never loosened. The sapling was safe.
Above them, the inn screamed. The sound of collapsing beams and the faint, muffled cries of the trapped filtered down through the floorboards.
And then came the distant tolling of alarm bells—slow, metallic, ominous.
The town was waking up.
"Everyone okay?" Low coughed, shoving a plank off her back. Her voice rasped like sandpaper.
"I'm fine," Jacqueline answered quickly, pushing herself upright. Her expression was pale but composed. "But the structural integrity of this building is… questionable. We need to leave before it becomes a tomb."
Leonotis nodded weakly, the rage drained from him, replaced by hollow exhaustion. "Which way?"
Zombiel didn't answer—just pointed.
At the far wall, a faint silver light bled through cracks in the mortar. Moonlight.
"Good eye, Sparky," Low said, grinning through bloodied teeth.
She heaved herself to her feet, grabbed a fallen wine rack, and—channeling every ounce of brute strength—swung it into the wall.
The impact echoed like a war drum.
Once. Twice.
On the third strike, the stones gave way, crumbling into a jagged opening.
Cold night air rushed in, cutting through the choking dust.
One by one, they scrambled through, emerging into the narrow alley behind the inn.
The world outside was chaos.
Windows blazed to life. Shouts rang through the streets. Dogs barked. The guards were coming.
The town of Irokoton—peaceful only moments before—was now a hornet's nest stirred by fire.
They didn't look back.
They ran.
Through twisting alleys slick with rainwater, over fences, past startled villagers leaning out with lanterns.
Their boots slapped against cobblestones, the sound swallowed by the rising wail of alarm bells.
Leonotis's lungs burned. Jacqueline's water-ward flickered around them, masking their scent and sound just enough to stay hidden as they slipped into the forest's edge.
Only when the last light of Irokoton vanished behind the trees did they stop running.
They collapsed at the base of an ancient oak, gasping for breath. The canopy above them whispered with the night wind, as if the forest itself was welcoming them home.
Low leaned back against the trunk, laughing breathlessly. "Well… I don't think we'll be getting our deposit back for the room."
Despite everything, Jacqueline chuckled—a small, weary sound that felt almost human again.
Leonotis didn't laugh.
He stared down at the sapling in his arms. Its leaves glowed faintly in the moonlight, trembling as if alive and listening.
It had survived.
His grief was still there—deep, heavy—but it had changed. It no longer crushed him. It moved him.
He had felt the inn's old wood answer his call. The very earth had risen for him.
The sapling was no longer just a symbol of his failure.
It was a promise. A living conduit for something far greater than himself.
Zombiel crouched beside him, touching one of the leaves. It pulsed faintly under his fingers. His fiery eyes widened—not in fear, but reverence.
They exchanged a look—one of understanding.
They weren't just children on the run anymore.
They had faced death and brought down a building.
They were a girl who commanded water like a weapon.A girl whose strength could shatter stone.A boy of living flame.And a green aseweaver who could make the earth itself roar.
They were something new.
Something the world wasn't ready for.
And their real journey had only just begun.
Meanwhile, back in Irokoton, the once-cozy inn was a ruin.
Gregor, the bounty hunter, groaned as he pulled his leg free from a massive root still twitching faintly.
Smoke, dust, and the copper tang of blood filled the air. His men were strewn across the wreckage—some moaning, others silent.
"Did you see that?" a guard stammered, his eyes wide with terror. "The water—by the Orisha—the girl bent it like a blade!"
"Forget the water aseweaver!" another hissed, clutching his burned arm. "The little one—he looked at me and my armor started to melt!"
Gregor said nothing.
His gaze swept over the destruction—the splintered walls, the roots still writhing faintly, the black scorch marks etched into the floor.
This wasn't a skirmish. It was a warning.
He'd seen aseweavers before. But this… this was different.
The roots had moved like predators. The air had trembled with power.
He felt it in his bones.
"Two thousand sovereigns…" he muttered. "That's not a bounty."
He looked at the corpses of his men. At the ruin that had been the inn.
"It's a suicide note."
No one answered him.
Above them, the moon hung pale and cold, glinting off the wreckage of Room Seven.
And somewhere in the forest beyond, the fugitives were already becoming legend.
The story would spread in whispers first—then in awe.
Four children who defied the Aetherium Genesis Institute.A girl who wielded water like wrath itself.Another who bore the strength of beasts.A silent boy who burned steel with his gaze.And a green aseweaver who turned a building into a living monster.
It would become myth.A prophecy in motion.The night the hunted became heroes.
The night the world of men learned to fear the forest again.
And as the bells of Irokoton tolled into the distance, Leonotis clutched the oak sapling tighter, its faint glow pulsing like a heartbeat in the dark.
In that fragile rhythm, he heard it—a whisper of something vast, ancient, and alive.
The Dryad's voice, carried in the sapling's leaves.
"Grow, little one."
He looked toward the horizon, eyes hard, breath steady.
And for the first time since the Dryad's death, Leonotis smiled.