Ashes of the Sky

The whispers became a scream.

*Give her to the soil. Complete the cycle.*

Elliot clenched Mia's pendant in his fist, the metal biting into his palm. Across the fire, Lila slept fitfully, her bandaged arm twitching as black veins crawled toward her collarbone. The rot had spread faster than he'd feared—her breaths were shallow, her skin slick with fever sweat. She'd hidden it well, but the truth was in the way her fingers clawed at the dirt, as if the earth itself called to her.

He stood, pacing the edge of their makeshift camp. The plateau offered little shelter, the rocks sharp and the wind sharper. Below, the forest churned with movement—shadows too large, too *wrong*, to be natural. The spire's voice slithered into his mind again.

*You waste time. She is already lost.*

"Shut up," Elliot hissed, pressing the pendant to his temple. The cold metal silenced the whispers, but not the guilt. Mia had sacrificed herself to buy the world time, but the gate's "reset" was a lie. The cycle wasn't satisfied. It wanted more.

A whimper cut through the dark. Lila thrashed in her sleep, her bandage unraveling to reveal tendrils of black resin knitting her skin to the soil. Elliot knelt beside her, peeling her hand from the earth. Her eyes flew open—pupils dilated, irises streaked with gold.

"It's in my head," she gasped. "It's *singing*."

---

By dawn, Lila could no longer walk.

The corruption had reached her shoulder, the resin hardening into a carapace that fused her arm to her torso. She leaned against Elliot as they hobbled downhill, her breath ragged. "Leave me," she muttered. "You can't carry me and fight."

"Not an option," Elliot snapped, though his arms trembled under her weight. The forest below had gone unnervingly silent. No birds, no wind, just the crunch of their footsteps and the occasional drip of black ichor from the trees.

They found the truck at midday—an abandoned military vehicle half-buried in the muck, its tires rotted but its engine intact. Elliot wrenched the door open, praying for fuel. The tank was full.

"Since when does luck exist?" Lila rasped, slumped in the passenger seat.

"It doesn't," Elliot said, eyeing the spire's pendant on the dashboard. It glowed faintly, as if pleased.

The engine roared to life. They sped north, toward the coordinates Dr. Patel had once called "the heart." The roads were cracked but passable, the sky a fragile blue that felt like a taunt.

Lila drifted in and out of consciousness, her whispers merging with the spire's. *The roots are hungry… They need a warden…*

Elliot gripped the wheel tighter. "Stay with me, Lila. We're close."

"To what?" she laughed weakly. "Another death trap?"

Before he could answer, the truck lurched. The road ahead *rippled*, the asphalt splitting open as something massive breached the surface—a tangle of roots and jagged bone, its core pulsing with the same crystalline growths they'd seen in the corpse.

Elliot swerved, but the creature was faster. A barbed tendril speared the hood, pinning the truck in place.

"Run!" he yelled, shoving Lila's door open.

She didn't move. Her eyes were fixed on the creature, her voice eerily calm. "It's not here for you."

The tendril retracted, coiling around the truck as the creature loomed over them. Up close, it had a face—a grotesque mosaic of human features stretched across its biomass. Mouths screamed silently; hands clawed at the air.

Lila reached out, her corrupted arm glowing gold. "It's okay," she whispered. "I hear you."

The creature stilled.

Then it knelt.

---

The spire's laughter echoed in Elliot's skull. *You see? She belongs to the cycle now.*

Lila turned to him, her eyes fully gold, her voice layered with a hundred whispers. "The gate didn't reset the world. It *awakened* it. The Garden needs a warden to tend the rot… to choose what lives and dies." She pressed Mia's pendant into his hand. "You have to finish it. Burn the roots. Burn *me*."

Elliot recoiled. "No. There's another way—"

"There isn't." She smiled, tears cutting through the resin on her cheeks. "I'm already gone, Elliot. But you can still save what's left."

The creature hissed, tendrils curling around Lila like a throne. She didn't fight as it lifted her, didn't scream as it carried her toward the pulsing heart of the forest.

Elliot stood frozen, the pendant searing his skin.

Then he ran.