The Root Archive
There was no breath in the place beneath the pool.
No sky. No ground. Just light—green-gold and endless—and the sound of a single, ancient heartbeat echoing through layered roots like cathedral bells.
Cuco floated at first.
Then fell.
But it didn't feel like falling. More like sinking into a thought that didn't belong to him.
He landed in a hall made entirely of bark and light.
Massive trees formed walls. Their trunks split into shelves, their rings inscribed with shifting glyphs. Leaves turned like pages. Roots tangled into staircases.
This wasn't a forest.
It was a library.
And every memory it held was alive.
---
Cuco stepped forward, the ground humming beneath his feet.
A vine stretched from the ceiling, curling gently toward him. It brushed his forehead.
And the world exploded.
---
He was no longer Cuco.
He was someone else—someone older, standing at the edge of a great city woven from dream-silver and bloodwood.
The first Circle.
They weren't a council.
They were a cult.
He watched as they fed their memories into living tomes, carving out pain and power, burning forests to bind their books.
He saw one among them—hooded, quiet—who refused to give up his dreams.
The others called him the Rootbound.
They mocked him.
Feared him.
Until his blade bloomed in his hand—not metal, but memory sharpened into form.
He did not strike.
He simply planted it.
And the city died.
Replaced by forest.
---
Cuco gasped, falling to his knees.
The vision ended.
The vine curled back, dripping golden sap.
Another one reached for him.
He took its touch.
---
A battlefield.
Hundreds of Dreamers with glowing marks, corrupted by the Hollow.
Not an invasion—but a backlash. A war of balance.
And a child—carrying the Tome like a heart in his chest—walked among them, untouched. Not Dreamer. Not Hollow.
Chosen.
His name lost to time.
But his power lived on.
---
Cuco tore free from the vision, chest heaving.
The Archive pulsed.
Still more memories to see.
Still more roots to climb.
But one thing was clear now:
The Tome hadn't chosen him randomly.
The blade wasn't a weapon.
It was a memory.
A promise.
Planted to bloom again when the Circle forgot what they were.
> "You are the seed and the scythe," a voice whispered from the leaves.
"What you cut down, you must also grow."
Cuco stood.
Steadier now.
He still didn't know what he was becoming.
But he knew this:
He wasn't alone.
The forest remembered him.
And now, he remembered it.