The wind changed before the warning came.
Sharp.
Fractured.
Like a breath that had never agreed to be exhaled.
Kael stopped walking.
The bottle froze mid-air, no longer pulsing glyphs—only flickering.
"Warning," it finally said.
"Pact Link Unstable."
"Node: Cire-01.
Status: Splintering."
Mara spun to face Kael.
"I thought the pact was stable."
Kael's mouth tightened.
"So did I."
The sky overhead cracked in silence—
a single, hairline fracture stretching across the western cloudline.
Cire was still hours away, at the southern camp they'd left him in.
And yet—
Kael could feel the shard vibrating through his own glyph.
Not violently.
But wrong.
He turned without a word and ran.
By the time they arrived, the camp was gone.
No smoke.
No fire.
Just a perfect absence.
The ground was scorched in a ring—twelve feet wide, smooth as glass.
At its center sat the shard.
Cire's.
Still pulsing.
But without a host.
Kael approached slowly.
His own palm glyph reacted immediately, glowing in recoil.
The bottle pulsed a glyph they hadn't seen before:
"Fracture Class: Pact Disavowal."
"Cause: Internal Rejection."
Mara broke the silence.
"He broke it himself."
Kael knelt beside the shard.
It trembled once—
then stabilized.
No sound.
No signal.
Just silence.
He whispered,
"Why?"
The bottle tried to process.
Then failed.
"Resonant Link Error.
Source: Non-external interference.
Decision Loop Severed Internally."
Mara turned away, jaw tense.
"You told me this was choice.
You said the pact doesn't bind."
Kael didn't look up.
"I meant it."
"But you weren't ready for someone to say no."
That hit harder than he expected.
Harder than any enemy strike.
Because she was right.
He had prepared for infiltration.
For mimicry.
For betrayal.
But not for voluntary retreat.
He lifted the shard carefully.
It responded to his touch—barely.
No longer hostile.
No longer resonant.
Just… dormant.
Mara paced the edge of the burn ring.
"I warned you.
Every time you create a connection,
you hand them a version of yourself."
Kael stood.
Still holding the shard.
"Then maybe I wasn't giving enough of the right version."
She turned to face him fully now.
Eyes narrowed.
Not angry.
Just tired.
"You think this world can be remade with trust?"
"It wasn't built that way, Kael.
It was built from erasure.
From silence.
From things that refuse to stay."
Kael didn't respond.
Instead, he reached into his coat, removed a strip of fabric, and gently wrapped the shard.
Not to protect it.
But to remember.
"Even the ones who leave," he said,
"are still part of the bloom."
They left the scorched ring in silence.
Mara said nothing more.
But Kael knew the seed of doubt had landed in her, too.
And for the first time,
he wasn't sure it would bloom into something better.
Back in the Rootless Bloom's sanctuary,
a whisper echoed through the petals.
She smiled faintly.
"Not all pacts break with fire."
"Some break with truth."