The forest screamed as Elliot ran.
Mia's pendant hung heavy around his neck, its cold metal thrumming in time with the corrupted roots beneath his feet. The air reeked of decay, the trees bleeding black resin that pooled in the soil like tar. Somewhere ahead, Lila was becoming something *else*—a puppet of the cycle, a warden of rot. Elliot's lungs burned, but he pushed harder, following the pendant's pull toward the heart of the Garden.
A roar split the silence. To his left, the ground erupted, a creature of thorns and teeth lunging at him. Elliot ducked, rolling as a barbed tendril shredded the air where his head had been. He scrambled to his feet, clutching the pendant. It flared, casting a pale light that made the creature recoil.
"*Back!*" he shouted, thrusting the pendant forward. The creature hissed, its many mouths gnashing, but retreated into the shadows.
The radio in his pack crackled to life.
"Elliot! Do you copy?" Dr. Patel's voice was strained, barely audible over static.
He fumbled for the device, nearly dropping it. "Patel? Where are you?"
"No time. Listen—the roots have a core. Destroy it, and the system collapses. But you'll need to—"
A guttural shriek drowned her out. Elliot spun as another creature emerged, this one larger, its biomass studded with human eyes that blinked in unison. He ran, the radio still sputtering.
"—pendant is a key! Use it at the core!"
The creature gave chase, its footsteps shaking the ground. Elliot vaulted over a fallen tree, his boots slipping in the muck. The pendant's glow intensified, guiding him toward a sinkhole ahead, its edges lined with pulsating roots.
*The core.*
He slid into the sinkhole, the walls closing in around him. The air thickened with the stench of decay, the roots here alive, *breathing*. At the center stood a massive orb of intertwined tendrils, glowing faintly gold—a grotesque twin to the spire.
The radio crackled again. "Elliot, the core is a neural nexus. The pendant can disrupt it, but the feedback will be… catastrophic."
"What feedback?" he demanded.
"It could kill you."
Elliot stared at the core. Somewhere, Lila was trapped in this nightmare. Mia was gone. The world was a wound.
He pressed the pendant to the core.
---
**Lila's world was memories.**
She floated in a void, the cycle's whispers now a flood. She saw worlds born from stardust, civilizations rising in ignorance, consuming themselves in fire. The Garden was no cultivator—it was a *surgeon*, amputating rot to preserve the whole.
*You are the scalpel now,* the voices said. *Cut the infection.*
But Lila clung to fragments of herself—Elliot's voice, Mia's laugh, the weight of her own name. She clawed through the void, finding tendrils of the core's golden light. *No. We're not infection. We're…*
*Alive,* she thought fiercely. *Flawed. Alive.*
---
The core erupted in light.
Elliot screamed as the pendant fused to his hand, the heat searing his flesh. The roots writhed, the creature above howling as the forest shuddered. Golden cracks spiderwebbed through the core, the ground beneath him splintering.
"Lila! *Fight it!*" he roared, not knowing if she could hear.
The void trembled.
Lila tore at the golden threads binding her, each snap echoing in the real world. The core's light dimmed, the roots crumbling to ash.
But the Garden fought back.
The sinkhole collapsed.