The air in Blackspire tasted of rust and rain.

  Sorin knelt before the golden sapling—now a tree, its trunk slender but unyielding, its leaves shaped like half-lidded eyes. They trembled as he reached out, not in fear, but in recognition. The scars on his hands pulsed faintly, as if humming along to a tune only the tree could hear.

  "You came back."

  The Gardener stood behind him, her hands buried in the pockets of her patchwork coat. Moonbloom petals clung to her sleeves, glowing faintly in the twilight. She didn’t smile, but her voice was soft, like soil giving way underfoot. "Most don’t. They dig up their pasts and find they can’t bear the weight."

  Sorin’s fingers hovered over the bark. "And if I can’t?"

  "Then you’ll bury it again," she said simply. "But the earth remembers what you try to forget."

  A breeze stirred the leaves. For a moment, the eyes blinked—slow, languid—and the tree exhaled a sigh that smelled of burnt sugar and old parchment. The same scent from Lanternrest. The same scent from his dreams.

  Sorin’s chest tightened. "How do I listen?"

  The Gardener plucked a leaf from the lowest branch. It curled in her palm like a sleeping child. "Like this."

  She pressed it to his ear.

  Sound rushed in.

  Not sound—memory.

  A marketplace, laughter, the clatter of wooden swords. A child’s voice, bright and bold: "I’ll be the Hollow King today!"

  Then another voice, weary but warm: "And who will you crown, then?"

  A pause. A giggle. "You, silly! Kings need knights!"

  Sorin jerked back, the leaf crumbling to dust between his fingers. His pulse hammered against his ribs. "Whose memory was that?"

  The Gardener tilted her head. "Does it matter? It’s yours now."

  He stared at the tree. "I don’t remember that."

  "No," she agreed. "But the garden does."

  A rustle in the undergrowth. A small figure emerged—a girl, no older than Lyria, her hair tangled with vines, her skin dappled with pollen. She clutched a flower to her chest, its petals shifting colors like a dying ember.

  "Bloom," the Gardener said, "has been waiting for you."

  The girl—Bloom—opened her mouth. But the voice that came out wasn’t hers.

  It was Kael’s.

  "Nothing lasts," she whispered, "not even kings."

  And then, softer, in Aeris’s voice: "You left us behind."

  Sorin’s breath caught. "What is she?"

  The Gardener stroked Bloom’s hair. "A echo with roots. She borrows voices the way flowers borrow light."

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Bloom reached out, offering the flower. When Sorin took it, the petals unfurled, revealing a tiny, perfect dagger—carved from wood, its hilt wrapped in red thread.

  A child’s toy.

  A knight’s promise.

  Sorin’s hands shook. "This was mine."

  The Gardener hummed. "Was it?"

  Above them, the tree’s branches creaked, its eye-leaves fixing on something distant. Something not yet there.

  Bloom’s borrowed voices lingered like smoke.

  Sorin turned the wooden dagger over in his hands, the red thread fraying at the edges. It felt familiar—not just as an object, but as a promise. The kind children make before they learn how easily oaths unravel.

  "Where did she find this?" he asked.

  The Gardener knelt, pressing her palm to the soil. "Nowhere. Everywhere. The garden collects what slips through the cracks." She sifted the earth between her fingers, and for a moment, Sorin saw shapes in the falling dirt—a crown, a hand, a door left ajar. "You planted a seed, and it grew roots in places you can’t see."

  Bloom tugged at Sorin’s sleeve. When she spoke again, the voice was Lyria’s, but the words were wrong: "The crown remembers. The boy forgets."

  A chill skittered down Sorin’s spine. "Is that—is that something Lyria said?"

  "No," murmured the Gardener. "It’s something she will say." She plucked a petal from Bloom’s hair and let it fall. As it touched the ground, it dissolved into light, and the air shimmered with a scene:

  Lyria, older, her eyes hollow with grief, standing in a ruined hall. A crown—his crown—crumbling in her hands.

  Then gone.

  Sorin recoiled. "That’s not real."

  "Not yet," said the Gardener. "But the garden doesn’t care for when. Only what might be."

  Bloom crouched, pressing her ear to a cluster of violets. They trembled, then began to sing—a wordless lullaby Sorin had heard before, in the Broken Sanctum’s echoes. Kael’s melody. The Hollow King’s requiem.

  "Can she control the voices?" Sorin asked.

  "Can you control your scars?"

  The question hung between them. Sorin flexed his hands, the golden lines flickering like embers.

  The Gardener stood, brushing dirt from her knees. "Come. The tree has more to show you."

  The golden tree’s trunk split near the base, revealing a hollow just wide enough to crawl into.

  "You’re joking," Sorin said.

  The Gardener’s smile was a knife’s edge. "Do I seem like the joking sort?"

  Inside, the air was thick with the scent of sap and something metallic—blood or rust, he couldn’t tell. The walls pulsed faintly, veins of gold threading through the wood. And there, curled in the roots, was a child.

  No—not a child. A memory of one.

  Small, dark-haired, clutching a wooden sword. The same boy from the leaf’s vision.

  Sorin’s throat tightened. "Is that... me?"

  "A version of you," the Gardener corrected. "One that never grew up."

  The boy looked up, eyes wide and wet. "You’re late," he whispered.

  "For what?"

  "The coronation."

  The roots shifted. The hollow expanded. And suddenly, Sorin stood not in a tree, but in a crumbling chapel, its stained glass windows shattered. Before him knelt the Hollow King—himself, but older, face obscured by a crown of thorns and molten gold.

  And at his feet, the boy with the wooden sword.

  "Kneel," the Hollow King murmured.

  The boy obeyed.

  A hand—Sorin’s hand—reached for the crown. But as his fingers brushed it, the vision fractured, and the tree screamed.

  Sorin stumbled back, gasping, into the garden’s twilight. The tree’s eyes were all open now, weeping golden sap.

  Bloom wailed, a chorus of stolen voices spilling from her lips:

  "You were never meant to wake up—"

  "Find the crown before it finds you—"

  "Why couldn’t you let go?—"

  The Gardener caught Sorin’s arm, her grip like iron. "Breathe. Or you’ll drown in it."

  "What was that?" he choked out.

  "A might-have-been," she said. "A path you didn’t take. One the crown remembers anyway."

  Sorin dragged a hand through his hair. "That boy—he wasn’t me. I was never... I wouldn’t ask a child to—"

  "Are you sure?" The Gardener’s voice was gentle, but her eyes were relentless. "Kings and children are made of the same things. Dreams. Promises. Regrets." She gestured to the tree. "This is what happens when you bury them instead of burning them."

  A petal landed on Sorin’s shoulder. He glanced at it—and froze.

  The image in its veins was faint but unmistakable: Aeris, dagger in hand, standing over the Hollow King’s body.

  "No," he whispered.

  The petal crumbled.

  The Gardener sighed. "The garden doesn’t lie. But it doesn’t comfort, either."

  Bloom, now silent, pressed a single flower into Sorin’s palm. Its stem was wrapped in red thread.

  A plea. A warning.

  A choice.

  The wind shifted. The tree stilled.

  And then, from deep in its roots, a voice—not Bloom’s, not the Gardener’s, but his own, twisted with time:

  "You left us behind."

  The ground beneath Sorin’s feet cracked open, and the last thing he saw before the garden swallowed him whole was the Hollow King’s crown, hovering in the dark.

  Waiting.