The Hollow was a living breath.
It expanded and retracted, not in size but in spirit. Some days the paths opened wide, inviting. Other days, they folded in on themselves, making the same tree appear again and again until even time seemed to spiral.
But the Rootless had learned one thing with certainty:
The Hollow always knew your thoughts.
Ko sat cross-legged by the silent creek. Fog kissed the water, and thin veins of red fungus grew near the banks. He stared at his open scroll case, fingers trembling over a piece of parchment.
A message. Short. Sealed in wax. A call to the Kuzu Clan.
"Anomalous activity. Possible cult with chakra-altering rituals. Awaiting orders."
He hadn't sent it. Not yet.
He didn't know why.
Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was the way Pebble watched him like she knew his pulse from the sound of his footsteps. Maybe it was how Dew always seemed to stand behind him without making a sound. Or maybe… it was the fog.
Because when Ko tried to leave, the trees would move.
He tested it once, walked straight for the southern path, the same one he had entered from.
It looped.
Twice.
Then he noticed the trees were bending ever so slightly in his path, not touching, but guiding. And worse-
They were watching.
He heard whispers in the fog. Not from the Rootless.
From the forest.
"You will leave when you stop running."
"Your clan cannot cleanse what still burns."
"You are not Kozu here. You are seed."
That last one made his bones cold.
So now, the scroll remained half-written. The ink half-dried.
And he, for the first time in years, felt like he didn't want to go home.
Pebble's Invitation
"Come."
Pebble's voice was not loud. When she spoke, it was like rain starting on dry stone, unmistakable, certain.
Hako looked up from his bark-notes, quill still dripping with mushroom pigment.
"Where?"
She grinned. Her teeth were sharpened, filed down at the edges. Decoration or madness, he didn't know anymore.
"To the Deep Root."
That name wasn't one Zassō used. But Pebble had whispered it before, while tracing spirals into moss. She always pointed west, where the fog grew thicker, the trees older. Where even the birds didn't fly.
Hako hesitated. "Is Zassō coming?"
She shook her head, slowly.
"He doesn't go there. The Root doesn't speak to him."
A beat of silence.
"Yet."
They passed the Ash-Willow, the shrine, and the totems. The Hollow grew quieter as they moved. Even the insects fell away. The air didn't change in temperature, but the weight did.
Denser. Heavier.
Like walking into memory.
The trees grew closer together, their trunks wider than houses. The bark was dark, gnarled, and bore deep claw-like grooves. No sunlight pierced the canopy.
But everything glowed.
Tiny spores floated in the air, bioluminescent motes of blue, red, and violet. They drifted like stars in reverse. Some clung to Hako's skin and pulse points, pulsing faintly like they were measuring him.
Pebble didn't flinch.
She moved with practiced steps, bare feet sliding between root hollows and spiraled fungi. She led him to a clearing so circular, it felt artificial, deliberate.
In the center stood a tree unlike the others.
It wasn't tall.
It was wide.
A stump, perhaps once a great tower of life, now petrified into a mound. Its surface was smooth, blackened. Not charred, calcified. The edges of its rings shimmered faintly.
But the strangest part?
There were faces in the wood.
Human.
Dozens, maybe hundreds. Eyes closed, as if sleeping. Some screamed silently. Others smiled.
Hako staggered back.
"What… is this place?"
Pebble sat cross-legged before the stump, her eyes glazed in reverence.
"This is the Root that remembers."
.
Hako had seen many things in the Hollow, visions, jutsu, Zassō strange scrollwork.
But this was different.
He reached out, placing one hand on the tree's edge.
The moment his skin made contact, he was gone.
Not in body.
But in mind.
He stood in a long, dark room.
Candlelight. Cold stone.
A blade in his hand.
Another in his brother's.
They circled.
Words were spoken, but no sound.
And then-
Steel clashed.
A blur of pain.
Then his brother, lying still, blood soaking the tatami mat.
"I didn't mean to-"
"You were supposed to stop-"
He remembered running.
The sound of sandals echoing in the hall.
He remembered crying.
He remembered...
Nothing after.
Until now.
Hako gasped, yanking his hand back. He collapsed onto the moss, chest heaving, eyes wide.
Pebble sat unmoved.
"You see him?" she asked softly.
"My brother…"
He sat upright, shaking.
"He… I ran. I left him."
The fog thickened gently around them.
"The Root doesn't judge," Pebble said. "It only remembers. That's all we can do, too."
She leaned forward, pressing her forehead to the stump.
" Zassō teaches us to breathe. But the Deep Root teaches us to sink. You can't grow unless you root. Deep. Deep enough to hurt."
Back at the stream, Kozu stared at his scroll one last time.
He had rewritten it.
"No clanmates or threats detected. Forest conditions prevent a return route. Containment recommended; will monitor."
He burned it over a candle, watched the ash spiral up.
Then he looked to the trees and whispered:
"I'm not ready yet."
That evening, Zassō sat beneath the Ash-Willow. He smoked slow, thinking.
Something in the forest had changed.
He could feel it in the fog.
The Deep Root had opened. Not to him.
But to someone.
And the Hollow was starting to dream.
He smiled softly.
"Guess I ain't the only teacher no more."
He exhaled.
And the smoke formed the shape of a seed… with roots spiraling downward into darkness.
.
Three days had passed since Hako entered the Deep Root with Pebble.
He emerged alone.
He came at dawn, barefoot, covered in soil, hair matted with dew and pollen. His eyes were wide, not in fear, but in clarity. He didn't speak for an entire hour, just sat by the Ash-Willow, a thick branch clutched in his hands like a staff.
Then he began to write.
Not on bark.
On flesh.
His own arms, chest, shoulders, he tattooed words into his skin with an obsidian quill dipped in moss-ink.
Commands.
Short phrases, half-memory, half-instinct.
"Breathe what you forgot."
"Strike what still hurts."
"Roots do not run."
"If the foot remembers, the hand will follow."
"My body is the memory."
He didn't eat.
Didn't sleep.
And by the fifth day, he rose and performed a kata no one had seen before.
It wasn't shinobi taijutsu or samurai swordplay. It was something else.
He moved like someone remembering how to walk again.
Each strike was paired with a phrase. Each motion carved through fog, not to hurt, but to invoke.
When his palm struck the air, fog pulsed outward.
When his foot slammed the ground, it echoed with a distant sound, a baby's cry, a mother's laugh, a door slamming.
Each motion triggered a memory, not his, but the forest's.
Pebble watched, eyes wide.
Dew stood motionless, breath held.
Even Chime whispered, "This... is not jutsu."
And he was right.
This was Root Style.
Not an attack.
An invocation.
Hako wasn't fighting.
He was recalling.
Zassō watched from a distance. Sat on a stump. Pipe in hand. One brow raised so high it could scrape the moon.
"Man... what the hell is this boy doin'?"
He puffed.
A silence.
Pebble clapped quietly as Hako finished his twelfth kata and collapsed into moss, sweating and smiling like he'd just unearthed his own grave and found treasure inside.
Zassō blew out a long, thoughtful stream of smoke.
"Alright. Okay. Cool."
Another puff.
"…but real talk? I'm gettin' bored as fuck. "
Pebble blinked.
"You speak like before again."
Zassō stood.
Tall. Loose. Grinning wide.
"Yup. Enough with all that mystic monk shit. That was fun for a while. Had to play the part. Y'all needed the vibe."
He cracked his neck, twisted his back, exhaled a fog-ring that turned into a spinning mushroom.
"But lemme tell you somethin', straight. I'm still me. Ain't no death gonna rewrite this soul. I'm just Zassō. King of Cloud. Lord of Leafless Logic. Emperor of Enlightened Ignorance. The motherf*in' Highka-."
He tossed his pipe, summoned a new one mid-air with a snap of chakra-smoke, lit it off his fingernail, and dragged like the apocalypse.
The Rootless stared.
"Shit's gettin' too serious. Hako talkin' to roots. Dew tattooin' silence. Pebble got a rock with a boyfriend now, don't think I ain't notice that weird smile you gave it, girl."
Pebble blinked. "He understands me."
"I bet he do."
Zassō stretched his arms, exhaled a puff shaped like a toilet seat, and stomped one foot into the ground.
The fog around him swirled violently.
He called it.
Cloud Style: Fog Slap
A wave of dense air smacked a nearby boulder so hard it cracked in half.
Zassō grinned.
"Now that's how you announce breakfast."
Later that day, Hako approached Zassō near the Seat of Stillness. No riddles. No cryptic quotes.
Just, "I want to spar."
Zassō grinned. "You wanna scrap? Thought you was out here doin' yoga with ghosts."
"I want to test Root Style. Against you."
Zassō took a long drag, ash falling like cherry blossoms in reverse.
"Aight, lil' leaf. Let's see if your memories can smoke me."
The Hollow gathered.
Even the trees seemed to lean inward.
Dew circled the clearing with chalkdust and crushed leaf powder. Pebble set totems along the edge, their faces smudged with charcoal. Chime beat a slow rhythm on an old wooden drum.
Zassō stood loose. Pipe clenched between his teeth. Robe half-open. One hand on his curved blade.
Hako stood tall. Branch-staff in hand, body inscribed with memory commands.
"Begin," whispered Dew.
Round One
Hako moved first.
"Strike what still hurts."
His staff snapped forward. Mist around him thickened into hands, ghostly images of people, places, pain.
Zassō sidestepped, slow. Cool.
He clapped his hands.
Cloud Style: Misdirection Haze
Hako struck air.
Then himself.
But smiled.
"Roots do not run."
He stomped.
The ground cracked, and Zassō foot sunk an inch.
He raised a brow. "Aight, that's cute."
He snapped his fingers.
Cloud Style: Contact High
A dome of fog burst from his pipe, surrounded Hako instantly. Eyes dilated.
The boy froze, caught in a sudden loop of memory.
His brother.
The blade.
The blood.
"I'm sorry-!"
He almost dropped.
Almost.
But he whispered:
"My body is the memory."
The glyphs on his skin glowed.
He moved through the haze.
Blind, but anchored.
A swing.
Zassō leaned back by inches.
"Damn. You really doin' it, huh?"
Zassō exhaled a final cloud, this one shaped like a mirror.
"Let's end it with reflection."
Hako nodded.
He charged.
Staff out.
But at the last second, he bowed.
The staff tapped the moss.
A gesture of respect.
Zassō laughed.
Loud. Proud.
And clapped.
"Man… you win that round, young blood."
That night, they smoked together.
Side by side.
two men who found clarity in fog.
Zassō looked at Hako.
"You writin' your own scroll now."
Hako nodded. "It's not jutsu. It's... movement memory. Action rooted in truth."
Zassō tapped ash off his pipe.
"You growin'. That's good. Just remember, don't get too deep. Roots feed the tree, but too much root? You drown."
Hako smiled faintly.
"I'll remember."
Smokebush Hollow has shifted
Root Style now exists, a new path of movement through memory.