The darkness embraced Moyan like a forgotten memory.
As he plunged downward, the shaft walls pulsed against his shoulders - warm and slick like the inside of some great beast's throat. His golden roots flared to life instinctively, their glow revealing the truth of the passage. What he'd taken for carved stone was in fact petrified wood, its surface etched with spiraling glyphs that seemed to rearrange themselves as he passed.
The air grew thicker with each foot of descent, carrying an unsettling metallic sweetness that coated his tongue. It reminded him of the taste left after biting one's own cheek - that coppery tang mixed with something indefinably organic. His enhanced vision traced the intricate patterns in the walls - whorls and knots that told stories in a language of growth and decay.
When his boots finally broke the surface of the pool, the water didn't so much splash as part before him. The liquid flowed around his legs with unnatural sentience, its viscosity changing moment to moment - sometimes thin as rainwater, other times thick as tree sap. The surface tension held strange properties; his golden light refracted through it in prismatic geometries that painted fleeting images across the cavern walls.
Haiyu stood transfixed ahead, her silhouette haloed by the chamber's ambient glow.
The transformation in her posture was profound. No longer the cautious hunter, she stood with arms outstretched in perfect crucifixion, head thrown back to expose the pale column of her throat. Moonlight-pale roots crept up her neck like living jewelry, their delicate tips questing toward her jawline with disturbing sentience. The wrist that had healed wrong now looked deliberately reshaped - the bones forming intricate knotwork beneath translucent skin, the fingers slightly elongated.
Moyan opened his mouth to call out, but the roots on his arm spasmed violently in warning.
The water at his feet shimmered, then resolved into visions:
First Vision (Depth: 3 feet)
The pool showed a younger Jian Luo, perhaps only a few cycles into his service as Warden. His ceremonial robes of woven bark dripped with the same clear liquid that now surrounded them. The hands pressing a silver seed into young Haiyu's palms were still free of corruption, though the fingernails had begun darkening at the beds. The girl couldn't have been more than sixteen summers old, but her eyes already held that familiar, calculating sharpness.
Second Vision (Depth: 6 feet)
The same Jian Luo convulsed as roots erupted from his mouth in a grotesque flowering. His scream came silently, the sound swallowed by the pool as his body distended like overripe fruit. The transformation wasn't violent so much as inevitable - like watching ice melt or leaves unfurl in fast motion. His essence dissolved into the liquid, joining the shadowy figures suspended below.
Third Vision (Depth: 9 feet)
An older version of himself watched from the chamber's edge as a black-haired child drove a dagger into the pedestal far above. The blade wasn't metal but living wood, its hilt carved with the same spirals that now adorned Moyan's arm. The child's face remained frustratingly obscured, though their small hands bore the distinctive crooked pinky that ran in Haiyu's bloodline.
The water stilled abruptly, the visions dissipating like smoke.
Haiyu turned with dreamlike slowness. The chamber's eerie luminescence pooled in her eyes, transforming them into smoldering embers. When her hands moved, each sign left faint afterimages that hung vibrating in the thick air:
This. (A closed fist over her heart)
Is. (Fingers splaying outward)
Where. (A sweeping arc)
We. (Hands clasping)
Change. (A twisting motion)
The. (A pause)
Story. (Fingers blooming like a flower)
The final sign lingered longest, its ghostly outline pulsing with latent energy.
The splash came without warning.
Jian Luo erupted from the pool's center in an explosion of crystalline droplets, his gasp echoing off the chamber walls. His silver-streaked hair clung in ropy strands, the living vines woven through them twitching with panicked energy. The transformation had progressed further - his eyes now shone with that unnatural amber glow even in darkness, and the webbing between his fingers had grown more pronounced.
"Found the exit," he rasped, swiping water from his face. When he pointed downward, Moyan noticed his nails had hardened into dark, curved claws. "Turns out we're not the first visitors."
Moyan waded forward. The water resisted each step with increasing viscosity, as if the pool itself sought to delay his progress. His roots recoiled as the depth increased, their glow dimming to frightened embers the further he ventured from shore.
What lay beneath defied comprehension.
The abyss revealed its secrets in layers:
First Layer (0-10 feet)
Dozens of figures floated in perfect suspension, their faces peaceful in repose. Some wore armor from forgotten eras - breastplates of blackened chitin that still pulsed with faint bioluminescence, helms woven from living thorns that continued growing around their wearers' skulls. Others were clad in simple robes embroidered with constellations that no longer matched the night sky.
Second Layer (10-20 feet)
The Wardens here bore more elaborate root markings, their bodies partially fused with the chamber's structure. One woman had vines growing through her eye sockets, their tips flowering where her pupils should be. A man nearby had become one with his armor - the chitin plates now growing directly from his flesh.
Third Layer (20+ feet)
The deepest figures were barely recognizable as human. Their forms had merged completely with the roots, becoming more sculpture than flesh. Yet their eyes - those remained disturbingly aware, tracking Moyan's movements with silent intensity.
One figure near the surface made his breath catch - a tall man with Kainan's broad shoulders, his face serene in death or sleep. The roots cradling him had formed an intricate latticework that pulsed gently, as if keeping time with some distant heartbeat.
"The other Wardens," Jian Luo murmured. His voice held an unsettling note - something between reverence and grim amusement. "Guess retirement looks different than I imagined."
Haiyu's hands slashed through the water with uncharacteristic violence, dispersing the nearest reflections:
Not. (A sharp cutting motion)
Dead. (Fingers forming a corpse's stillness)
Waiting. (Hands cupped as if holding something precious)
The chamber trembled in response.
Above them, the intricate root-vault began unraveling with terrifying speed. Thick tendrils retracted toward a single point in the ceiling where a familiar darkness pooled - the same cosmic wound that had festered in Nyxara's statue. As the roots withdrew, they left behind intricate patterns burned into the air itself, glowing glyphs that told stories of:
A great tree that once touched the stars
A war fought not with weapons but with memories
A cycle older than civilization itself
Jian Luo's grin showed too many teeth, his amber eyes reflecting the growing vortex. "Right on schedule."
The roots on Moyan's arm burned suddenly - not with pain, but with dreadful understanding.
This chamber wasn't a tomb.
It was an alarm clock.
And they'd just hit snooze.