Thalia steps forward. She walks to the edge of the cavity and kneels, pressing both hands flat against the root floor. The floor here is the Cathedral itself, directly connected to the core, the closest surface to the nexus of consciousness that drives the entire structure.
Her marks blaze.
Light pours from her hands into the root floor. The reaction is immediate. The Cathedral shudders. Every vine wall, every rib of the ceiling, every tendril connecting the core to the structure convulses. The man at the center opens his eyes.
They're silver. Exactly like mine.
"Thalia," I say again, and the word comes out rougher than I intend. "Hold."
She holds. The light from her marks intensifies, pushing deeper, the anchor taking shape. I can feel it through my corruption, through the shared Rootline connection, through whatever thread ties every Kaelren to every other. She's lockingthe Cathedral to a fixed point. Pinning it. Stopping the constant shift, the endless adaptation. For the first time in fifty-three cycles, the structure is being forced to hold still.
It fights back. The vines in the walls thrash. The core's eyes are fully open now, silver and empty. The face that looks like mine twists with something between fury and terror. The Cathedral doesn't know how to be still. Stillness is death. Stillness is vulnerability. Everything about this creature was built to move, to adapt, to never be caught in one shape long enough to be reached.
Thalia is catching it. And the effort is tearing her apart.
I see it start. Her edges blur. Not her marks, not her clothing. Her edges.
The outline of her body softens first. The definition of her hands against the root floor begins to fade. The sharpness of her jaw dulls, her shoulders losing their clarity. Dark hair slips around her face, the strands blurring at the edges.
She flickers, like Nimor used to flicker, like a signal losing coherence.
"Thalia!" Elle's voice. Sharp, terrified.
"I'm holding," Thalia says through gritted teeth. "The scale is. I didn't expect."
She flickers again. Harder this time. For a full second, I can see through her. The root floor is visible through her hands, her chest, her face. She's becoming transparent. The power required to anchor something this massive is pulling her out of the timeline, exactly the way she warned us it could.
"She's destabilizing," Elle says, the calm in her voice holding by a thread. "Kaelren, she's losing coherence."
I know. I can see it. My daughter is kneeling on the floor of a Cathedral built from a version of me, and she is dissolving. The anchor is working. The Cathedral is locked. The core is reachable for the first time.
And the cost is my daughter.
"Don't stop," Thalia says. Her voice is thin. Not all of it is reaching us. Parts of the sound are leaking sideways, scattering across timelines the way Elle scattered when she dispersed from the Heartspire. "Elle, go. Go now. I can hold it. I don't know how long. But I can hold it."
"Not like this," I say, and my voice breaks. "Thalia. Not at this cost."
"This is the cost," she replies. "This is what I was made for. Go."
She flickers again. Her hands are half-invisible on the root floor. Her marks blaze green-gold through a body that is losing the ability to contain them.
Elle looks at me. Her eyes are wet. Her jaw is set.
"She's holding the door open," Elle says. "I have to walk through it."
"I know."
"Stay with her. Don't let her go."
"I won't."
“For the record,” Peeble says under their breath, “this feels like a mistake that will be discussed later in great detail.”
Elle gives them a knowing glare, then turns and runs toward the core.
I kneel beside my daughter and place my hands over hers on the root floor. My corruption meets her anchor, and the combined force steadies her for a moment. One breath.
She solidifies. Her edges sharpen. She gasps, draws in air, then pushes harder.
