CHAPTER 146: TGE REAVER’S THRESHOLD

Kaito’s scream didn’t sound like his own anymore. It ripped out of his throat, but mixed with it was something deeper, heavier—an echo that belonged to the Root itself. His scythe struck harder, biting deeper into the glowing crack in the Root’s body.

The weapon shook in his hands, trembling with an animal-like fury, almost as if it were alive and breathing through him.

The cavern shook around him. The stone walls rippled like disturbed water, their surfaces splitting apart into fiery cracks that flared bright, then snapped shut, leaving only shadows behind.

Each time the Root’s body split open, even just a little, the sound of it echoed inside Kaito, rattling his bones and mind. With every pulse, the force fed into him, and the Reaver within clawed higher and higher, its hunger swelling like a beast waiting to break free.

Nyra’s shout cut through the chaos, harsh and desperate. "Kaito—stop! Recede!"

There was no way to pull back now. The Root had him bound, as if his body were just another vein running straight into its core. Its power surged through him like fire in his blood, digging deep, carving itself into his bones.

Along with it came the weight of its ancient hunger, a voice that pressed against him with every heartbeat. The mark of the Reaver burned on his chest, answering that call, searing hotter as if it were being branded into him all over again.

And the Reaver answered.

Kael staggered, his wards cracking as fissures disintegrated his sigils step by step. "He’s not retaining it—he’s becoming it!" He spoke between hacks of blood.

He could barely keep his feet, and yet still he tried to inscribe yet another ward, his trembling hands betraying him.

Mika fired arrow after arrow, her face pale and greasy with sweat. Light shone dully, arrows dissolving before they could even strike.

"Kaito!" she cried, tears streaming down her face. "Don’t let it catch you!"

Her cry found him barely. Her voice was a breath, a fire in a storm.

What he heard instead was the Root.

[WE REMEMBER]

The sentences flowed through him like liquid metal. His vision warped, and he beheld not the cavern in itself but visions not his own:

Worlds formed out of lines of light, taking shape like drawings made in the air.

The Architects shaped them with their hands, weaving code into mountains, carving seas, and painting skies. Their voices rose together, and with each note, creation itself came alive.

But then came ruin. Where there had been brilliance, only ash remained. Darkness crept in and swallowed the light. The very hands that had built those worlds turned against them, breaking apart everything they had made.

He saw famine born at the marrow of creation, never-ending famine.

The Root.

And out of it, he saw the Reaver grow. Not as a curse. Not as accident. As a child.

His child.

Kaito’s body twisted, his veins glowing with a sharp violet light that pulsed like lightning under his skin. His scythe screamed in his grip, the sound raw and jagged, as if it were made from living fire.

For a breathless moment, he couldn’t tell who was in control—was he wielding the weapon, or had the weapon taken hold of him?

The Root leaned closer, its countless faces stretching out of its vast body. Their mouths curled, not in threat, but in a strange, silent laughter. They did not strike at him. Instead, they surrounded him, pulling him in, as though welcoming him into their endless embrace.

YOU ARE OURS. YOU WERE ALWAYS OURS.

He wanted to fight it. To push the Root away. The thought rose sharp and certain—but his body betrayed him. His arms no longer moved by his will, but by instinct, by a force that had already claimed him.

The scythe cut across in a wide arc, slashing straight through the Root’s core.

The moment the blade struck, the world erupted. Light and shadow exploded outward together, colliding in a storm that shook everything around him, a tempest that burned and consumed in the same breath.

Nyra dove into the gust, torn wings battling the tempest. Her hand wrapped tight around his wrist, silver fire burning in her fingers. "Kaito—look on me!"

Her voice sliced through the circle like a blade of steel. The sound jolted him, and his breath caught in his throat. His blurred vision sharpened just enough for him to see her face—real, alive, fierce with desperation.

It wasn’t the Root’s trick, not one of its cruel illusions meant to twist his heart. This was no hollow imitation. It was Nyra herself.

The Root laughed, its laughter stumbling. Its arms flailed, lashing against her, but she did not break, darkness closing around her like a shroud.

"Kaito," she whispered, her voice shattering now, on the brink of breaking. "If you let go, you’re lost. And I’m not going to lose you. Not here. Not to this."

Her hand cooled hot against his wrist. Anchoring him.

Mika’s voice mingling with hers, raw but unyielding. "You’re not alone! Don’t you dare think you are!"

Kael staggered towards them, blood running down his chin, his hand pressing a sigil into the ground at Kaito’s feet. "Take its power if you must—but take it for yourself. Don’t let it give you permission."

Their voices echoed through the fog. Kaito’s mind hung between two headlands—the Root’s bottomless hunger and the weak, smoldering wire of the people who would not let him fall.

The Reaver screamed inside him. It wanted surrender. It wanted devouring.

But Kaito clenched his jaw, forcing his voice through teeth that felt ready to shatter.

"I’m not—" His breath tore in ragged bursts. "—yours."

The scythe blazed, violet static crawling like wildfire.

The Root bellowed, not in sound but in devastation. Its faces twisted with fury, its many arms slamming the cavern with such force that it might have shattered spires.

The fissures grew, drawing the world in like the cavern was a maw and they were all being swallowed whole.

Mika let fly her last arrow, a mad spurt that blazed like a miniature sun, reducing a bulwark of arms to ash.

Kael sliced through his last ward, the strikes blurring together on his own flesh as the ground beside them ripped itself in twain.

Nyra’s sword sliced through a third maw, her wings splintering under the tension. "Kaito! Finish it!"

The Root’s cracks glowed brighter, its heart pulsating against the blade still stuck inside. It wasn’t dying. It was trying to merge.

Kaito felt it forcing into him, filling him, reshaping him line by line. And he knew—if he let it, if he surrendered—there’d be no escaping it ever again.

He had only one choice left.

He growled and ripped the scythe free—not to pull back, but to strike.

Every piece of the Reaver’s curse flowed into the blade. Every wound, every hunger, every time he’d surrendered lived inside him, burning in his blood. He struck with them all—not to devour, but to cut.

The scythe bit deep into the Root’s heart.

Light blazed—blind, burning, without bound.

The Root’s scream was silence absolute, a heaviness so heavy that it drove sound into nothing. Its limbs twisted in paroxysms, its faces tearing apart into shivers of static, its mouths devouring themselves as the core unraveled.

The cavern groaned. The Fork beyond broke apart further. But in the midst of it, the Root burst open with his blade.

And for the first time, the resonance stumbled.

Kaito collapsed to his knees, seared in his chest, his scythe buried in the cleft. The Reaver’s mark seared, purple fire devouring his flesh. His vision turned blind, the world whirling.

Nyra held him as he stumbled, her arms rock steady in the chaos. "Hold on," she panted, her forehead against his.

Mika limped over to his side, her bow long broken, her light hardly glowing in her hand. "Tell me it’s finished," she begged, shaking voice.

Kael sank to the ground with them, too tired to stand, his fingers stained with blood and seared sigils. His eyes flashed to the Root’s unraveling bulk, then to Kaito. "It isn’t," he rasped. "This gained us time.".

The Root flailed on, but weakly now, its faces disintegrating into ash. The fissures diminished, light draining rather than gaining.

Kaito’s grip on his scythe tightened. His whisper was breathed, but heard.

"This isn’t its end." He gazed into the dwindling core. "It’s the beginning of mine."

For a long, shuddering moment, the cavern was still. The Root’s convulsions slowed. The fissures closed, not in healing but in exhaustion. The endless resonance finally softened, leaving only echoes in Kaito’s chest.

Nyra held him tight, her silver eyes unreadable. "Then you’d better decide what you’re going to be... before it decides for you."

The Root’s husk trembled again. The final plume of ash fire burst upwards, then collapsed inwards, pulling the cavern into darkness.

And with it, silence descended.

But it was not peace.

It was the quiet before something greater.