Chapter 314: The World Tree’s Roots

For several seconds after the fall, nobody moved. Dust drifted through the air, and somewhere nearby, someone groaned.

Arthur looked up. A massive golden root, larger than a building, passed through the ceiling and vanished into the darkness above them before splitting into dozens of smaller roots that spread across the chamber walls.

He pushed himself the rest of the way up. "Everyone still okay?"

"Still alive," Sun said from somewhere to his left.

Arthur turned. Sun was sitting against a broken stone pillar, rubbing his shoulder. While Kong was staring at a statue before slapping it gently. "This one’s weird.’"

Sun followed his finger. "...Yeah." He frowned. "That’s weird."

"What?" Arthur asked.

"Kong hasn’t stopped staring at that."

Arthur looked at the root. Nothing about it seemed unusual. "Maybe he likes trees."

Kong immediately shook his head. "No."

Arthur blinked. "Okay. So not that."

Athy flew down from above. "I’m fine!" She spun once to check herself, then looked around at their surroundings, and her expression slowly changed. "Where are we?"

Mithra stood and brushed the dust from her clothes. "Underground."

Sun looked at her. "Thank you, Mithra."

She smiled. "You’re welcome."

"I was being sarcastic."

"I know."

Arthur couldn’t help laughing. Even in the middle of all this, they were still themselves.

Then he looked around again, and the humor faded. Stone streets stretched across the enormous chamber, lined on both sides by buildings that had mostly collapsed.

Broken pillars ran along what had once been a massive road, and statues stood beneath layers of dirt and roots, some shattered and others almost completely swallowed by the golden roots growing through the ruins.

One of the students was already on his feet, staring at the ruins with wide eyes, and another stepped up to an ancient wall and touched the stone. "These buildings aren’t natural."

Athena hadn’t said a word since the fall. Her eyes moved across the roads, the architecture, the statues, and the carvings, and her expression changed. "An entire civilization lived down here."

Luna looked around slowly. "Under the Secret Realm?"

"Not exactly," Athena said, pointing at the enormous roots. "Under the World Tree."

Arthur looked up. The roots were everywhere, and they didn’t just pass through the ruins. They had become part of them. Some buildings had been built around the roots, and others had been split apart by them.

One enormous root passed straight through the remains of what looked like a temple and disappeared into another chamber beyond it.

Arthur walked closer. "How old is this place?"

"I don’t know." Athena crouched beside a broken piece of stone. "But the architecture is older than anything we’ve found on the surface."

Luna’s eyes widened. "My grandfather talked about the Mirrors, the barriers, and the regions." She looked around. "But never a city beneath the World Tree."

Arthur frowned. "Maybe nobody knew."

Athena looked at him. "Or maybe nobody was supposed to find it."

For a moment, no one spoke.

One of the students swallowed. "Why would anyone hide an entire civilization?"

Nobody had an answer.

Arthur glanced around before pausing when he saw a statue. He stood up before walking over and getting a better look at it.

The statue had once been a Beast with a long, scaled body, though most of its head had broken away. When Arthur crouched, he saw a symbol carved into its chest, a tree surrounded by five smaller circles.

His eyes narrowed. "The Mirrors."

Athena came over at once and studied the carving. "Yes."

Luna stepped beside her. "It’s the same symbol."

"Then they were here," Arthur said. "The people who created the barriers."

Athena’s expression turned thoughtful as she looked at the ruins around them. "They weren’t just studying the World Tree. They lived with it."

CLANG.

The sound came from farther down the road, and everyone turned. One of the students raised his weapon. "What was that?"

Scrape. Scrape.

Something was moving behind the ruins, and Arthur raised Dusk. "Everyone stay together."

A Beast crept out of the darkness. It was small, or at least it had been once. Its body was thin and twisted, covered in blackened fur, with purple veins pulsing beneath its skin, and one of its legs had grown into a strange root-like limb.

The students raised their weapons, but Arthur held up a hand. "Wait."

The Beast growled and looked at them, and then it simply collapsed, its body twitching.

A student took a step forward. "Is it corrupted?"

Athena nodded. "But not like the others."

Arthur crouched beside it.

The creature was barely alive, and its body was wasting away instead of growing stronger.

He looked around and saw more remains scattered across the ruins, old Beast skeletons, some half buried in roots and others reduced to fragments.

"This place has been abandoned for a long time," he said.

"And something has been living here ever since," Athena said.

Luna looked at the dying Beast. "The Miasma?"

"Possibly," Arthur said, standing. "Or whatever was left after the civilization disappeared."

They went deeper, and the farther they went, the more they found. An ancient weapon lay beneath a collapsed wall, a stone table was covered in faded markings, broken armor rested beside the remains of a staircase, and old Beast bones had been embedded straight into the roots.

A student stared at them. "Did they fight here?"

"Some of them did," Athena said, pointing ahead, where the stone floor was cracked, several walls had collapsed inward, and deep claw marks scored one of the pillars. Then she pointed somewhere else. "But those aren’t battle wounds."

Arthur looked, and he saw more bodies like the one they had found when they first landed.

One lay beside a wall, its clothes nearly destroyed by time, and another was buried beneath a collapsed structure.

The third stopped him cold.

It was inside a root. The enormous golden root had grown around the person’s torso, trapping their arms against their sides, and their half-visible face was frozen in terror.

Nobody spoke.

"...What happened to them?" one of the students whispered.

Athena walked closer and examined the body, then the root, and her face grew more serious.

"Just like the first one." She traced the edge where the golden wood had closed around the person’s body. "The root didn’t grow beside them." Her voice grew quieter. "It grew through them."

A student stepped back. "So they were killed by the tree?"

Athena didn’t answer right away. She checked another body nearby, then another. Some had been buried beneath stone, and some had been crushed, but several were unmistakably embedded in the roots.

She slowly stood. "Not all of them. Some of them died normally, and others were killed in the fighting." She looked at the people trapped in the roots, and her expression hardened. "But these weren’t killed. They were absorbed into the World Tree."

The student took another step back. "Why?"

"I don’t know," Athena said, looking at the roots. "But if I’m right, their bodies weren’t the only things it absorbed."

Arthur looked at her. "What else?"

Athena didn’t answer.

She was looking deeper into the ruins, where hundreds of roots, some thin and some enormous, ran through fragments of the ancient civilization. Buildings, weapons, statues, and bodies all seemed to have become part of the same network.

Arthur slowly walked toward one of the larger roots, and Luna noticed. "Arthur?"

He stopped. This root was different from the others.

Its surface was smoother, almost like polished wood, and faint lines ran through it. They weren’t cracks. They looked almost like writing.

He reached toward it, and Athena spoke up immediately. "Careful."

Arthur looked at her. "It’s not attacking."

"That doesn’t mean it’s safe."

Arthur smiled. "Neither was the last thing we touched."

Mithra sighed. "That’s not a good argument."

Arthur placed his hand against the root, and nothing happened. He waited, expecting his Evolution Path Vision to activate, but there was no evolution path, no distortion, and no information, only the feeling of warm wood beneath his palm. He frowned and almost pulled his hand away.

Then the world changed.

The ruins disappeared, and Arthur was standing somewhere else beneath a dark sky. The World Tree was enormous, far larger than the one standing above them now, its golden branches stretching across the entire horizon.

Hundreds of people were running, some carrying weapons and others carrying strange devices.

A woman stumbled through the crowd. "Separate the Mirrors!"

Someone grabbed her arm. "We can’t!"

"We have to!" She pointed at the World Tree. "It’s infected!"

Arthur looked up. Black veins were spreading across the golden trunk, and purple Miasma was pouring from the roots. The tree trembled, Beasts screamed, and buildings collapsed.

"If we destroy it, the Secret Realm dies!" another voice shouted, and the people froze.

A man stood beside a massive stone mechanism, his face covered in blood, looking at the World Tree. "The roots have already connected everything."

"Then what do we do?" someone shouted.

The man looked at the five Mirrors, and his expression hardened. "We need another way."

The vision shifted. Five figures carried the Mirrors away, one to the west, one to the north, one to the east, one to the south, and one to the center, while the World Tree screamed behind them.

Then the memory shattered, and Arthur pulled his hand away and stumbled back.

Mithra caught his shoulder. "Arthur?"

He stared at the root, breathing harder than before.

Luna stepped closer. "What happened?"

Arthur looked around, and everyone was watching him, even the students. He could still hear the ancient voices. Separate the Mirrors. It’s infected. If we destroy it, the Secret Realm dies. We need another way.

He slowly let out a breath. "I saw something. A memory, from the people who lived here."

Athena’s expression turned serious. "What did they say?"

Arthur hesitated. He didn’t need to tell them everything, and he certainly didn’t need to explain why touching the root had shown him anything, so he gave them the important parts. "The mural was right. They knew the World Tree was corrupted, and they separated the Mirrors to cut it off. But they couldn’t destroy it."

"Why not?" one of the students asked.

"Because the World Tree is connected to the whole Secret Realm." The student looked around at the roots, the ruins, and the underground roads, and Arthur could see it all click into place for him. "If the tree died..."

"...the Secret Realm would die with it," Athena finished.

Luna’s face went pale. "So they didn’t destroy it. They needed another way."

"The barriers," Athena said.

Arthur nodded. "The barriers."

Luna looked down at her compass. "That’s what my grandfather meant."

Athena nodded slowly and looked at the roots surrounding them. "The ancient civilization didn’t create the barriers to imprison the World Tree. They created them to contain the corruption."

One of the students stared at the enormous root. "Then everything you’ve done..." He swallowed. "You brought the Mirrors together. You broke the barriers."

No one answered him.

Far above them, the World Tree pulsed.

THUM.

The underground chamber trembled, and dust fell from the ceiling.

THUM.

The students instinctively moved closer together.

"And we woke it up," Luna whispered.

Arthur looked at the roots around them. Darker veins were slowly spreading through the golden wood, and purple light moved through the network.

The same corruption they had seen on the surface was spreading down here too.

His expression hardened. "Yes."

Mithra tightened her grip on Dawn Sovereign. "Then the ancient people knew this could happen."

Athena nodded. "Which means there may be more records."

Arthur looked ahead. The underground city stretched on into the darkness, its roads disappearing beneath enormous roots and its buildings continuing beyond what they could see. Somewhere in there, the ancient civilization had left behind the reason for its final decision.

Arthur raised Dusk. "Then we find them."

Luna looked at him. "Find what?"

"The rest of the story." He looked at the roots surrounding them. "We know why they separated the Mirrors." His eyes narrowed. "But we still don’t know how they planned to save the World Tree."

Athena’s expression sharpened. "You’re right. If they truly believed there was another way..." Her gaze moved deeper into the ancient city. "Then they must have left something behind."

Arthur smiled. "Exactly."

Vedas raised King Maker. "Then let’s search."

Sun sighed. "We just fell into an ancient underground civilization, found out the whole place was absorbed by the World Tree, and now we’re going treasure hunting."

Arthur looked at him. "That sounds exciting."

Sun stared. "That’s not what I said."

Mithra laughed. "He’s right, though."

Sun looked at her. "You’re encouraging him?"

"Obviously."

Arthur started walking, and the students followed, but after a few steps, one of them stopped. "Arthur. Look."

Arthur turned. The body embedded in the root was still there, but the root around it had begun to glow, faint golden light moving through the wood. Then, for just a moment, the ancient person’s eyes opened.

Arthur froze. They weren’t alive. They were glowing with the same golden light running through the roots, and then they closed again.

"...Did you see that?" Arthur said.

Luna nodded slowly. "Yes."

Athena stepped closer, her voice barely a whisper. "The memories may still be here."

Arthur looked deeper into the underground network, at hundreds of roots holding thousands of years of history, and perhaps the memories of everyone the World Tree had ever absorbed.

He tightened his grip on Dusk. "Then we haven’t just found ruins." He looked at the enormous roots around them. "We’ve found the World Tree’s memory."