Chapter 22. The Roots Remember Blood

The passage wasn’t hewn by chisel and mallet. It had grown, knot by sinew-like knot. Aeryn didn’t need to trace a fingertip along the walls to know this. The rootwork curved and braided in complex spirals—bark, bone, and blackened vine woven together like the sinews of some colossal creature. Every surface pulsed with the quiet logic of life unfolding, not the rigid angles of something constructed. The air in the tunnel pressed against her lungs—warm, humid, as if she stood inside a giant’s breath. There was no wind. Only a steady, insistent pressure. Only a relentless, lurking pulse.

She felt it deep behind her sternum, a slow drumbeat in her chest. The marks on her forearm had gone dark, but they throbbed as though strummed chords still resonating in flesh that had forgotten its own song until now. With each step the certainty inside her grew stronger—not certainty of destination, but of repetition. She had walked this way once before, in another life, wearing another shape.