I press two fingers against the base of the damaged wing, careful to avoid the torn membrane. My corruption responds, and it hurts. Using Root magic for healing when your body is more corruption than man is like running a river backward. Every cell in me wants tobreak,and asking it to build instead takes a level of control that makes my jaw ache from clenching.
The magic flows from my fingers into the membrane. Slow. Careful. I watch the torn edges tremble, then reach for each other, fibrous tissue stretching across the gap. It’s not perfect. The repaired section is slightly darker than the rest, a visible seam in the iridescence, but it holds.
Peeble tests it. One cautious flutter. Then another. The wing catches air.
“Oh,” they say, and their voice wobbles in a way that they will absolutely deny later. “Oh, that’s much better. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I won’t. I have a reputation.” They clear their throat and resettle their wings with exaggerated dignity. “Now. Where the hell are we? Because if you landed us in Jo’s garden, I swear I will compose a symphony of gratitude so embarrassing you’ll wish you’d left me wingless.”
I look around. The garden. The porch. The elm. Everything checks out. The locket around my neck pulses, steady, warm, the way it does when it’s close to the anchor point. For one desperate moment, I think we’re home.
Then I notice the sundial.
Jo’s sundial sits in its usual spot between the herb beds and the trellis. But the markings on the face are wrong. Not the numbers, the symbols etched around the rim. In our timeline, those symbols are a mix of Root script and Old English that Jocarved herself, a blend of both her worlds. I’ve studied them. I know every line.
These symbols are purely fae. No English. No compromise between worlds. Whoever carved this sundial never learned to blend in.
I look around and notice different furniture, a missing vegetable garden, and various Wynmire plants in its place.
“Peeble.”
“Already noticed.” Their voice has gone flat. “The herbs are wrong, too. Those are military-grade nightbloom and siege thistles. Jo grew tomatoes and basil.”
“Another iteration,” I say.
“Of course it is.” Peeble settles on my shoulder, their repaired wing tucked carefully against their shell. “Why would the universe do something reasonable like send us home? That would involve basic decency, and the Rootline has never once showed basic decency.”
Before I can respond, something growls.
Not from behind us. Not from the trees. Fromunderthe garden.
The ground shakes. Just a tremor at first, enough to rattle the wind chimes and send a crack racing through the dry soil between my feet. Then the tremor becomes a pulse, and the pulse becomes a rhythm, and the rhythm sounds like breathing.
Something massive. Something hungry. Something that’s been here long enough that the earth has grown around it.
“That’s not ideal,” Peeble observes.
The ceramic frog on the patio ledge tips and shatters. The wind chimes crash together. At the far edge of the garden, where the fence meets the neighbor’s yard, the soil splits.
What rises isn’t plant or animal—at least, not fully either. It drags itself out in pieces. First, a broad, eyeless head plated in hardened soil and root. Then a segmented neck, each jointgrinding as it straightens. Shoulders follow. Arms. A torso that keeps unfolding from the rupture, as if something too large was forced into a space too small to contain it.
By the time it finishes pulling free, it stands nearly twelve feet tall. Two arms hang at its sides, ending in dense knots of root fiber shaped like crude hands. Its head turns toward us, sightless, but aware.
The ground trembles in time with its breath.
“Root golem,” Peeble says, circling once in the air like they’re inspecting a questionable antique. “Ancient. Pre-iteration, if I’m reading that plating right. This isn’t new growth. This is old-root, compacted and hardened. Somebody planted this thing on purpose.”
“Planted it to guard what?”
Peeble tilts their head toward the torn earth beneath our feet. “Given that we just dropped in uninvited? I’m going withthis exact spot.”
The golem takes a step forward. The ground cracks under its weight. It raises one arm, root fibers fanning out into something that looks disturbingly like a blade.
I draw on my magic, corruption surging through my veins, black marks spreading up my arms, and prepare for a fight that I am not at all certain I can win.
That’s when an arrow punches through the golem’s left shoulder joint.
