The choice sat there between Micah and Lio like a weight neither wanted to pick up. Morning had crept in over the peaks, sending long fingers of dusty light through the Ironroot Grove. Everything had gone quiet—the ground wasn't shaking anymore, and the forest's desperate screaming had faded to this low, sad humming that made your chest ache.
Sera Lin stood with them, her face tight with worry. She was plugged into the ancient wood somehow, reading its pain like a thermometer, watching it slowly start to heal.
That pulse from whatever they'd found underground was still there, steady now instead of wild. Micah's Thornkin seed pressed warm against his skin, beating along in rhythm. Lio's scanner—usually spitting out data like a broken fire hose—was showing something that actually looked like patterns.
Like words, almost. Not Ashari, not the way Thornkin talked to trees, but something else. Something old as dirt.
Sera said it straight: whatever was down there didn't come from the forest, but the grove wasn't fighting it off either. That was the creepy part. This forest went crazy around Omniraith tech, recoiled from it like touching fire. But this? It was just... letting it be. Like it was waiting for something.
Micah's comm device cut through the quiet with that sharp little chirp that meant trouble. High priority. Command. He opened it with Lio breathing down his neck, and there it was—cold blue hologram, all business.
Orders to pack up and get back to Elora. Right now. For "containment and analysis." They wanted him, they wanted the signal, and they wanted to take apart whatever they'd stumbled onto like it was some broken machine.
It didn't feel like being called home. It felt like being collected.
Micah looked at Lio, then at Sera. The forest around them still looked beaten up from the shaking. Kaelin was probably already back in Elora with that prototype, getting grilled and treated like he'd done something wrong. And that vision—God, that nightmare of metal and wire with him sitting on some throne made of bones—it was still crawling around in his head. These orders felt like the first step toward making that real.
"Analysis incomplete," Micah sent back, keeping his voice level, professional. Pure Ashari-speak, the kind that bought you time. "Delaying extraction pending additional data collection."
It was mutiny, plain and simple. You didn't tell Command no, not when you'd grown up in their system, learned to salute before you could walk. But they'd found something here, something important. Something the Ashari would either lock away or twist into a weapon because that's what scared people do. This whole "steelborn" thing, this connection—it was part of him now, tangled up with the seed and that horrible vision. He couldn't let them just stuff it in a box without figuring out what it really meant.
Lio caught his eye and gave the tiniest nod. Kid understood what this meant. His whole life he'd been torn between wanting to do the right thing and doing what he was told. He'd already stuck his neck out once, sending unauthorized messages because he was scared and desperate for answers. Now he was scared of something else—scared of his own people and what they might do.
Sera watched them with those knowing Thornkin eyes of hers, picking up on everything they weren't saying out loud. She could see how fragile this whole thing was—the mistrust simmering just beneath their shaky partnership. What Ashari were doing here, going against their own Command? That just didn't happen. It went against everything their society stood for.
"I'll seal it up," she said, her voice carrying that timeless quality her people were known for. "Magic will do it. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out, until you figure out what all this means. The forest will keep the secret safe." Around the chasm, roots started moving on their own, weaving together into something alive and protective.
They stayed in the grove for hours after that, just thinking. The air had settled into something peaceful—leaves whispering overhead, the forest humming softly as it patched itself back together. Sera told them old stories, the kind that had been passed down through generations and carved into the memory of ancient trees.
She talked about beings who could somehow connect the natural world with elemental forces, sometimes even mechanical ones. Then came the darker tales—times when various powers had tried to twist this potential, forcing nature and machinery together in ways that never should have been.
Those experiments always ended badly. Her words hit close to home with what Micah had seen in his vision, leaving him with the uncomfortable feeling that maybe Omniraith hadn't invented this path—maybe they'd just stumbled back onto something that should have stayed buried.
Lio had his face buried in his devices, but for once he didn't look excited about what he was discovering. His fingers moved quickly across holographic displays, but he wasn't building weapons or sensors. Instead, he was working on containment systems and complex analog codes—ways to hide and protect whatever signal might come from the Hollow if it ever woke up again.
He was starting to get it: sometimes the answer wasn't bigger guns or fancier tech. Sometimes you just had to keep things safe and out of sight. This quiet work he was doing—not for Command, but for this fragile secret they all shared now—felt like the most important thing he'd ever done.
A scout from Elora showed up that morning, looking like he'd been riding hard and fast. His face carried that controlled urgency you always saw with Ashari officials, and it felt completely out of place in the peaceful grove. His message was delivered with typical Ashari efficiency, clipped and to the point, but it hit like a slap.
Command was not happy about Micah and Lio's delay. They wanted full cooperation, and more than that—they were starting to pull all Ashari units out of Thornkin territory. The alliance was coming apart at the seams.
Sera's face darkened. "This isn't just politics," she said, her voice dropping low and urgent. "The Omniraith know more than we thought. They might be playing with people's minds, spreading discord not through force, but through whispers—turning us against each other from the inside."
A chill ran through Micah. If they went back now, if they answered Command's call, everything would be lost. The secret of the Hollow, what that signal really meant, the truth about being "steelborn"—all of it would get stripped away, twisted around, and either used by the Ashari for their own ends or buried so deep it would never see light again.
His duty to Elora and the people he'd sworn to protect was crashing head-first into this terrifying knowledge they'd stumbled onto. The Core Nexus was waking up, Omniraith's plan to rewrite everything was picking up speed, and keeping this truth from their own allies felt like the only way to stop it from getting corrupted before they could even understand what they were dealing with.
As the Ashari courier got ready to leave, one of the Thornkin attendants came over with something small wrapped in leaves. It was a seed-scribed tablet—basically an old-school way to send messages when you couldn't risk wireless communication. Kaelin had sent it using one of Lio's stealth ashbird drones, the kind that could tail someone without making a sound.
Micah peeled away the leaves carefully. Kaelin's handwriting was scratched into the plant fibers, rushed but readable. The message hit like a punch to the gut: Ashari Command wasn't just suspicious anymore—they were gearing up for a full "containment expedition" into Thornkin territory. They were using the prototype, the thing that was supposed to prove their mission was a success, as an excuse to take control.
The last part of Kaelin's message sent a chill down Micah's spine. It was exactly what he'd been thinking: "They're scared of what we found. But not because they get it—because they don't."
Reading those words, knowing the risk Kaelin was taking by smuggling out this warning from inside Elora, sealed the deal between Micah and Lio. No more secret signals, no more unauthorized chatter. They were keeping this bigger secret from Command, period. Every word they said, every move they made from now on could give them away. Staying quiet and keeping things hidden had become their best defense.
They used the same seed-tablet to write back, with Lio working his analog codes into the biological markings. This one was just for Kaelin, handed off to a Thornkin courier they could trust. It would make its way back through the alliance's network—not through airwaves the Omniraith might be listening to, but carried by another one of those silent ashbird drones.
Later, as the morning sun climbed higher, Micah found himself in a quiet Thornkin clearing just outside the area Sera had sealed off. The forest was healing itself slowly, energy flowing back in gentle ripples. Glowing spores drifted around him like fairy dust. There was a peace here that felt completely different from the tight, nervous quiet of the Ashari peaks—the kind of calm that felt earned.
Micah still had that Thornkin seed Sera gave him—felt like forever ago now. The thing pulsed warm against his palm, like holding a tiny heartbeat. He dropped to his knees by a patch of good earth near where the roots sealed off the Hollow. Could've kept it, should've maybe, as some kind of reminder of what they'd built together. Instead, he pressed it down into the dirt.
"We were made to survive," he said quietly, words meant for the soil and whatever was listening down there in the root network. Not a promise to Command or the Thornkin or anyone else—just to some future he might never live to see. A future that needed both their steel and these living roots.
Lio hung back a bit, fiddling with one of his little crystal recorders. Nothing official about this one—just something for himself. A way to remember that all this wasn't just about cracking codes or beating the enemy. It was about finding meaning when everything else kept trying to tear it away.
Sera stood with them, steady as always. "Planting a seed means betting on tomorrow when you might not see it bloom," she said, voice soft as wind through branches. "That's what real courage looks like."
Micah got to his feet, dirt still under his fingernails, and looked out toward the horizon. Behind him, those mountains held everything Ashari—all that practical, hardscrabble life he'd grown up with. Ahead lay the old forest, wild and magical and patient in ways that made his head spin. And everywhere between, the war kept grinding on, Omniraith's cold machinery trying to crush everything alive and messy.
We were made to survive, he thought, that tiny seed already swallowed by earth.
But now we've got to learn how to grow.