CHAPTER 140: THE STRING BELOW I

The quiet did not last.

Far beneath the Fork, there was a stirring—a muted pulse that spread outwards. It was not sound, nor was it a normal vibration, but something stranger, older.

It was as though a call written in the very bones of the world, upwards from the hidden roots beneath.

The stones underfoot trembled as if they were stunned, struggling to recall what shape they were meant to assume, what purpose they were forged for.

Nyra stopped suddenly, her sword still damp with spectral ichor. "Did you feel that?"

Kaito nodded slowly. The Reaver’s sigil on his arm flared, black-red tendrils of light twisting beneath his skin. "The Root." His voice was low, almost lost to the heavy static creeping along the horizon. "It’s waking."

Farid moved closer, one hand still pressed to his side. "No. That’s impossible. The Root was tied—buried in the Dominion’s code, locked down by the Architects. Unless." He paused. His lips tightened. "Unless someone’s been writing over it."

Almost as if the world itself replied, the ground shook once more. Broken pieces of ruined buildings came crashing down, scattering in showers of stone and drifting clouds of ash.

Dust filled the air, stinging the throat and clinging to the skin. Around them, the atmosphere grew heavier, pressing down on every breath.

Then came the rhythm—slow, steady, and immense. It wasn’t just noise but a feeling that ran through the earth and into their bones, like the deep, endless beat of some giant heart buried far below.

"Look!" Mika pointed upward.

The Eclipse in the sky was no longer still. The dark ring began to twist and shift, its edges tearing apart like ripped fabric. With each heavy beat of the strange pulse, it spread wider, tugging at the light itself and stretching it into long, broken shadows.

What had once only covered the Fork was changing—it wasn’t just hiding the world anymore. It was trying to sink further, reaching into a place beyond sight, beyond what anyone could truly understand.

A voice shrieked in the cracks of reality. Not words. Not language. Just hunger.

Nyra bent close to Kaito, her expression grim. "It’s reaching for you."

He felt it as well. The Root wasn’t waking in confusion—it knew what it was looking for. It was reaching out, searching through the cracks of the world, tracing the thread of code that bound itself to the Reaver.

That thread was the piece it had once lost, and now, buried inside his own flesh, the Root had finally sensed it again.

Heat flared inside him. The Core burned like a brand pressed against his chest, and fire spread through his body in rushing waves. His heart hammered as if trying to fight back, pushing against the weight of the Root’s demand.

For a moment, two powers clashed within him—the shard he had stolen and made his own, and the vast, endless will of the Root beneath the Fork, pulling and commanding that the shard be given back.

Kaito doubled over, gritting teeth. He barely had a steady voice: "It’s pulling me in—trying to recreate me. If I lose control—"

"You won’t," Nyra said brusquely, grasping his shoulder. "You’ve conquered worse."

But her hand trembled, betraying her fear.

Farid’s gaze fixed on the horizon, where the ruins melted into jagged black spires. "If the Root wakes fully, this Fork won’t hold it. The Dominion’s walls will crumble. We won’t just have Shades and Architects to fight—we’ll be on the doorstep of something far worse."

"Then we move." Kaito stood upright, his breath ragged but his stance firm. "We find where it’s breaking through, and we cut it off before it finishes."

Mika shifted uneasily, her grip tense on her bow. "And if we’re too late?"

Kaito made no reply. He had no need to. The silence that greeted her was answer enough.

The path carried them deeper into the Fork, and the place around them grew stranger the farther they went. The shapes no longer seemed like broken ruins but more like open wounds in the world itself.

Towers leaned toward one another at angles that defied reason, their jagged edges crossing like blades.

The shadows they cast split across the ground, sharp and dangerous, as though they could cut the earth open. With each step forward, the hidden pulse grew heavier, thudding through the air and into their bones, steady and relentless, like the slow beat of a massive drum beneath the world.

Sometimes the earth split open, revealing to them moments of what lay beneath. Not earth. Not stone. But rows of lightless code, sewing downward in never-ending lines, as if the Fork itself was sewn shut over something more. Mika choked on the vision of it, and Farid turned away.

Nyra breathed only: "The Root..."

By the time they reached the plaza—the center of the Fork—the air tore open.

The sky tore open, just for an instant, and through it Kaito saw something enormous and twisted. A trunk of black light, thicker than any spire, ascending and twisting forever. It pulsed once, twice—each beat a command written into the marrow of the world.

The Root.

It wasn’t yet awake. But it was moving, its fragments stitching, its memory reforming. Soon, it would wake up.

And when it did—the Fork would collapse. The Eclipse would grow. And Kaito would no longer be Kaito.

The thunder of the heartbeat sounded louder now. The plaza floor cracked, pale lines of flame branching out in jagged trajectories. Whispers rode each crack, and this time they formed words.

Reaver... Fragment... Return...

Nyra drew her sword, standing between Kaito and the rifts as if she could halt the command with steel. "No one takes him. Not even you."

The ground convulsed. A shape tore free—a Shade, but larger, more substantial, its body marked with the pale fire of the Root’s calling. Its form was twisted, incomplete, as if sculpted by a hand that had yet to remember its art. And then another, and another, until the square churned with beings that could not be.

The Root’s first defense. Its first children.

Kaito’s hand tightened on his sword. His Core reacted, dark energy spilling down his arm.

"This is only the beginning," he snarled.

The Shades attacked.