The world split —
But not evenly.
Not symmetrically.
Not clean.
Manraj vanished upward into blinding Root-light —
—and Zoya lunged after him with everything she had.
Her fingers brushed the edge of his shirt—
But the second her hand crossed the line of light—
Something else grabbed her wrist.
Not Manraj.
Not the Root.
Something cold.
Wet.
Hollow.
A hundred whispering hands burst from the cracked tunnel floor, clutching her arm, her waist, her legs, dragging her downward with a force that felt like drowning while still breathing.
Zoya screamed:
"MANRAJ—!"
The Root-light swallowed him whole.
Then sealed shut.
Leaving her in darkness.
The Under-Root roared beneath her feet.
And she fell.
---
THE DESCENT
Not falling through air.
Falling through memory.
Through discarded breaths.
Through the spaces between heartbeat and echo.
Zoya's Silence flared like a wild, thrashing white flame, trying to anchor her to something—anything—but the Under-Root devoured it greedily, sucking the energy into its shifting mass.
The hollow voices rose.
"…unfinished…
…broken…
…light's shield…
…bring her down…"
Zoya clawed at the darkness, trying to find a wall, a surface, anything to stop the plummet—
Her hand hit something.
Soft.
Warm.
Human.
She froze.
The darkness peeled away just enough to show a silhouette beside her.
Tall.
Broad-shouldered.
Familiar.
"Azhar?"
No answer.
Just a shape.
But this time—
Not a memory.
Not an imprint.
Not hollow.
This one looked like a body.
The Under-Root voice whispered:
"…the shield… belongs… below…"
And the silhouette beside her turned its head.
Slowly.
Unnaturally.
Empty black eyes locked onto her.
This was not Azhar.
This was what the Under-Root built from his absence.
Zoya's stomach twisted.
"No," she whispered. "No—you're not him—get away—!"
The figure reached for her.
Not to harm.
To guide.
Downward.
Into the deeper dark.
---
IMPACT
Zoya's back hit ground.
Hard.
The fall ended abruptly, like the Under-Root had decided gravity wasn't a real rule.
She gasped, scrambling to her feet, Silence sparking off her skin in broken bursts.
The world around her was wrong.
A forest of roots hung from a ceiling that wasn't a ceiling, dripping with shadow-water that moved against gravity. The ground pulsed like a heart, throbbing in sync with Manraj's last countdown number.
20 → 20 → 20
Her chest tightened.
"Manraj…"
She looked up.
The ceiling split open for an instant, a flash of white-gold ripping through the dark like a tear in fabric.
Then it sealed again.
He was gone.
Above.
Beyond reach.
And she was here.
Below.
Exactly where the Under-Root wanted her.
A whisper curled around her ankle like smoke.
"…shield…
…protector…
…keeper of the void…"
She swallowed hard.
"You can't have him," she hissed.
The ground around her trembled.
"…we do not want him…
…we want you…"
Her blood ran cold.
"Why?"
The answer came in a thousand whispering voices layered on top of each other like distortion:
"…because the vessel… trusts the shield…
…and the shield… can be rewritten…"
Zoya's hands burst into white Silence, brighter than ever.
She didn't step back.
She stepped forward.
"You can rewrite NOTHING."
The Under-Root laughed.
A horrible, wet, echoing laugh like the sound of drowning reversed.
"…fight…
fight…
fight…
please fight…
the stronger the shield…
the deeper the root…"
Zoya felt eyes opening all around her — dozens, hundreds — blinking from the dripping roots overhead.
Watching her.
Studying her.
Learning her.
She grit her teeth.
"I'm getting out of here."
A hundred hands erupted from the ground.
She blasted them back with a shockwave of Silence strong enough to crack the root-floors apart.
Then she ran.
Not away.
Not blindly.
But toward the direction where the Root-light had bled through.
Toward Manraj.
The Under-Root screamed.
And every part of this impossible world lunged after her.
---
MEANWHILE — THE ROOT-PLANE
Manraj collapsed onto a floor of blinding white, gasping, disoriented.
"ZOYA—!"
His voice echoed back at him but nothing answered.
Nothing.
And then — horribly —
The countdown twitched.
20 → 19
He whispered:
"…Zoya?"
The Root answered in a cold, resonant voice:
"THE SHIELD IS BELOW."
Manraj's chest went numb.
Below.
The Under-Root.
He staggered to his feet.
"No. NO. You take me—YOU DON'T TAKE HER!"
The voice responded without emotion:
"THE UNDER-ROOT CHOSE ITS O
WN.
YOU MUST CHOOSE YOURS."
Manraj's heartbeat cracked.
His jaw tightened.
His breath shook.
"I choose her."
The Root-light around him flared in surprise—
And Chapter ends on the moment where Manraj steps forward into the impossible decision that would tear the cosmology apart.