"You can bury a man. You can burn a city. But you cannot silence what refuses to be remembered."
---
The storm had no lightning—only silence. The kind of silence that heralds the extinction of kings.
Seven shadows descended through a sky torn open by forbidden rites. They didn't fall. They arrived. The Ravennas—ghosts of a forgotten order—touched ground with the stillness of executioners. Each one bore a Mark branded into their soul by the Ashvattha itself.
Aarav Sen stood before them, barefoot and breathing.
Anita stood beside him, her hand clenched tight around a blade she hadn't realized she'd drawn.
She whispered, "They're the Keepers' final sword."
He didn't look at her.
> "Then let them fall on me."
---
They were named for the seven roots the Tree severed during the Last Eclipse—each one an apostate, a heretic, a god-killer. Vel Asha, their leader, moved first.
She didn't speak until she stood close enough to smell the defiance on Aarav's skin.
"I am Vel Asha. Last Daughter of the Ninth Root. And your name is written in the roots of failure."
Aarav smiled. "Good. Let them remember it."
She drew her blade—an obsidian fang rippling with null-energy.
> "We do not kill you for sport. We do it to preserve meaning."
---
The blade moved like prophecy—unstoppable, unalterable.
Aarav caught it.
Not with a block.
Not with technique.
With memory.
The Mark on his palm flared, and time stuttered.
The air screamed as ancient symbols burst from the soil beneath him—carvings older than language. The Bone Orchard rose like a leviathan from the underworld, tearing the earth into a spiral of ash and petrified wood.
Skull-fruit dangled from gnarled limbs.
And beneath his feet, the Obsidian Monolith began to crack.
---
Vel Asha stepped back.
"This place is forbidden."
Aarav turned to her slowly, his voice no longer human.
> "I'm not here for permission."
"I'm here for what you buried."
---
The other six Ravennas spread out, forming a perfect circle of annihilation. Each wielded a weapon of concept: the Spear of Loss, the Chain of Guilt, the Mask of Silence, the Cloak of Regret, the Blade of Forgotten Names, and the Grimoire of the Unborn.
They didn't attack.
They invoked.
The orchard responded.
It remembered them.
Skulls cracked open. Roots screamed.
And Aarav spoke the words no one had dared utter in centuries:
> "Seventh Bloom: Root of the Fallen."
The Bone Orchard surged to life.
---
What followed was not battle.
It was excavation.
Roots split air. Trees bent time. The orchard dragged the Ravennas' pasts into the present.
Each assassin was forced to relive their origin—when they chose to betray their gods, when they offered their humanity to the Tree in exchange for silence.
Vel Asha tried to scream a command, but her mouth filled with ash.
Aarav strode through illusions and blood and memory.
He didn't kill.
He reclaimed.
---
Anita could barely stand.
She watched Aarav tear apart a Ravenna with one glance—ripping her Mark from her soul and weaving it into a crown of roots.
Another tried to phase out of reality—becoming absence itself—but Aarav remembered his name, and that was enough to undo him.
> "You are not forgotten," Aarav whispered.
"You are remembered. And remembrance is a blade."
---
The monolith erupted behind them.
It no longer carved names.
It bled them.
Aarav's. Anita's. The name of the Root-Child. The name of Aarav's sister—etched deeper than any other.
Vel Asha, broken and kneeling, trembled. "You don't understand. The Tree foresaw your ruin. The Collapse. You kill everything."
Aarav knelt before her.
His eyes flickered between timelines.
> "The Tree doesn't fear destruction."
"It fears what I might remember."
"Because memory is liberation. And I remember the first sin."
He didn't stab her.
He touched her.
Her Mark evaporated. The silence in her soul shattered.
Vel Asha collapsed—mortal, human, weeping.
---
Suddenly, the Bone Orchard began to retreat, as if the earth itself was swallowing the truth too dangerous to remain.
The Monolith cracked one final time.
And something beneath it moved.
Not a root.
Not a relic.
A coffin.
Wrapped in chains made of memory.
Aarav stepped closer, but Anita grabbed his arm.
"Not yet. You're not ready."
He turned toward her. "She's in there. My sister—her soul. The Tree took her."
"Then we need to burn the Tree. But not yet."
He stared at the sealed coffin.
---
Above them, in the branches of the true Ashvattha—miles overhead—a face appeared in the bark. An ancient face. Weeping sap.
It whispered in terror:
"Don't open it. Please. Don't make me remember."
Aarav looked straight into its wooden eyes.
> "You remember me now, don't you?"
"I was your first guardian. I bled to protect you."
"And you made me forget."
He turned away.
"For now… you keep your secrets."
But deep beneath the orchard, the chains began to snap.
And the Tree knew…
The Forgotten King was waking.