"Clear to the first junction. Left passage. The Cathedral's root network hasn't reached this deep yet."
The tunnel is well-lit, the bioluminescent markers guide us at every turn. I can hear the battle above us, muffled through the root ceiling. Thumps, cracks, the occasional vibration that shakes loose dirt from the walls. The Verdance is fighting back. The ward lines are active. Somewhere up there, Bryx and Sarnyx are holding the line.
Down here, it's just the four of us and the plan.
The plan is simple. Nimor leads us through the tunnels to a point beneath the Cathedral's projected position. We surface. Thalia anchors the Cathedral, locking it in place. Kaelren and I breach the outer shell and reach the core. The crew holds the perimeter long enough for us to do what needs to be done.
What needs to be done is the part we still haven't figured out, but one crisis at a time.
We reach the second junction, and Nimor phases back through the wall with his edges blurring. "Problem. The Cathedral's root system is extending underground. It's growing feeder roots into the tunnel network ahead of us. If we keep heading this way, we'll hit a wall of Root matter in about two hundred yards."
The temperature in the tunnel has changed. Warmer. The smell of sap is thicker, carrying a metallic undertone that makes my marks pulse in warning. The Cathedral is aware of the space beneath it, and it's filling that space the way water fills a container, seeping through every crack and gap.
Kaelren doesn't slow down. "Can you find a way around?"
Nimor phases out. Comes back ten seconds later. "Narrow passage, fifty yards east. The Cathedral's roots haven't reached it yet. But it's tight. Single file. And it won't stay clear for long."
We take it. The passage is barely shoulder-width, the root walls pressing close, and I have to turn sideways to squeeze through several sections. The markers here are dimmer, older, and less maintained. This isn't one of Thalia's main tunnels. It's an auxiliary route, possibly pre-dating her rebuild. The wood around us creaks and pops, and twice I feel the walls shift inward by an inch, the Cathedral's root system probing, reaching, testing the boundaries of the spaces it hasn't filled yet.
Kaelren goes first, his corruption marks casting faint shadows in the dim light. Thalia moves behind me, her breathing steady, her marks pulsing with controlled readiness. Nobody speaks. The only sounds are our footsteps and the low, rhythmic groan of a city being pressed by something enormous.
We emerge into a wider chamber and stop.
Above us, through a thin layer of root and soil, I can feel the Cathedral. A massive, shifting presence pressing down on us, itsweight distorting the root system, its magic radiating through the ground in waves that make my marks flare and my teeth ache. It's directly overhead.
"This is our exit point," Kaelren says. He looks up at the thin ceiling. "Nimor, can you confirm the positioning?"
Nimor phases up through the ceiling. He's gone for ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.
He drops back through the roots, and his expression tells me everything before he speaks.
"It knows we're here."
The words land in the chamber like a dropped blade.
"The Cathedral has grown a defensive layer directly over this exit point. Twelve feet of compressed Root matter, reinforced with the same adaptive armor it uses on its outer shell." He shakes his head. "It wasn't there thirty seconds ago. It grew the moment I surfaced. The core sensed the approach and sealed the breach."
"It anticipated the tunnel route," Kaelren says, and I can see the muscle working in his jaw.
"It anticipated you," Nimor says, careful with the words. "The defensive growth started before I surfaced. It responded to your presence in the tunnel, not mine. Your corruption signature triggered the adaptation."
Because the core is built from a version of Kaelren. And a version of Kaelren would absolutely route a defense team through the tunnel system to strike from below. The core didn't just predict the tactic. It predicted the mind behind the tactic.
"Can we breach the barrier?" I ask.
"Not without giving the Cathedral time to adapt further," Kaelren says. "By the time we cut through twelve feet of Root armor, it'll have grown another twelve behind it."
"So we go around," Thalia says.
“Oh, good,” Peeble says. “We’ve reached the part where everyone makes terrible decisions with confidence.”
"Around to where? Every exit point I've scouted is showing the same growth pattern." Nimor's form flickers with frustration. "The Cathedral sealed every viable approach vector within minutes of our entering the tunnels. It's not reacting to us. It's preempting us."
The chamber shakes. Above us, the battle is intensifying. I hear something massive impact the second-ring wall, a deep, structural groan that rolls through the root system. The Cathedral is pressing forward while we sit underneath it, trapped in the tunnels we thought would save us.
Kaelren turns to me. His silver eyes are calm, but beneath the calm is the grinding frustration of a man whose mind is his greatest weapon, and his greatest weapon was just used against him.
"The plan doesn't work," he says.
