# Chapter 962: The Cult's Attack
The night over Aethelburg was a velvet shroud, pricked by the cold diamond of distant stars. A low, rhythmic hum, the World-Tree's silent song, had been the city's constant companion for generations. It was a sound felt more than heard, a vibration of peace and continuity that settled in the bones. Tonight, that hum was frayed, thin as worn thread. Lyra felt it in the soles of her worn leather boots as she patrolled the perimeter of the great grove. The air, usually thick with the scent of damp earth and sweet pollen, carried a new, acrid tang, like metal left too long in the rain.
She paused, her hand resting on the gnarled bark of an outer sentinel tree. The bark was cool, but beneath it, she felt a faint, feverish tremor. It wasn't the deep, slow pulse of life she knew. It was a shudder. A flinch. Elias, the old fisherman she'd met on the coast, had called it a "sickness in the air," a plague of nightmares. He was right. It wasn't just in people's heads anymore. It was here, in the soil, in the roots, in the very heart of the world.
Her gaze swept across the moon-drenched clearing. The World-Tree's colossal trunk dominated the center, its canopy a dark galaxy against the sky. A handful of other gardeners were scattered about, their lanterns bobbing like nervous fireflies. They were tenders, not fighters. Their tools were trowels and pruning shears, their enemies blight and drought. They had no training for what was coming. Lyra's hand went to the hilt of the short sword Kael had insisted she take before he left for the wastes. It felt alien and heavy, a grim promise of a violence she had never sought.
A flicker of movement at the edge of her vision. Not a gardener. It was a shadow detaching itself from the deeper shadows of the city wall. Then another, and another. They moved with a silent, purposeful grace that was utterly wrong. They were not the clumsy thugs of a street gang or the disciplined march of the Wardens. They were phantoms, clad in grey, hooded robes that seemed to drink the moonlight. The Ashen Remnant.
Lyra's blood ran cold. She pressed a small, polished stone communicator, a direct line to the palace guard. "Intruders in the grove," she whispered, her voice tight. "The Remnant. They're here."
A crackle of static, then a panicked voice. "We see them. The entire western district is reporting… something's wrong. People are screaming in their sleep. We're overwhelmed."
The line went dead.
The cultists moved with horrifying efficiency. They didn't charge the grove. They fanned out, their hands filled with objects that pulsed with a sick, violet light. They weren't carrying torches or weapons. They were carrying corruption. Lyra watched in horror as one of them knelt at the base of a young sapling, pressing a jagged, crystalline shard into the earth. The sapling didn't burn. It wept. A thick, black ichor oozed from its bark, and its leaves curled and turned to dust in an instant. The silent song in Lyra's mind hit a discordant shriek.
"To me!" she yelled, her voice cutting through the unnatural quiet. "Defend the roots!"
The gardeners, their faces pale with terror, scrambled toward her. They grabbed rakes, shovels, anything they could find. It was a pathetic defense. Lyra knew it. But they would not let this sacred ground be defiled without a fight.
The first wave of cultists met them not with blades, but with a wall of psychic force. It was a physical blow, a wave of pure despair and nausea that sent the gardeners stumbling to their knees. Lyra gritted her teeth, the memory of Soren's stoic strength a shield in her mind. She pushed through the mental assault, her sword clearing its scabbard with a rasp. The blade felt clumsy in her hand, but her resolve was steel.
She lunged at the nearest cultist, a tall figure whose face was hidden by a deep cowl. He moved with impossible speed, sidestepping her attack and striking her with the back of his hand. The blow wasn't just physical; it carried a jolt of the same corrupting energy she'd seen in the sapling. Pain, cold and sharp, lanced up her arm. Her Cinder-Tattoos, usually a faint silver, flared with a warning light.
The gardeners rallied behind her, a desperate, chaotic melee. A burly man named Finn swung a shovel with all his might, only to have it shatter against a cultist's forearm. Another, a young woman named Elara, threw a handful of pruning shears like a dagger, the blades clattering harmlessly off a robed figure. They were fighting ghosts, and the ghosts were winning.
From the center of the cultist line, a new figure emerged. He was taller than the others, his robes a deeper black, embroidered with silver thread that formed the twisted, spiraling symbol of the Ashen Remnant. He wore no mask. His face was gaunt, his eyes burning with a feverish, holy light. This was their leader. Brother Malachi.
He ignored the skirmish at the edge of the grove, walking with a steady, unhurried pace toward the World-Tree's main root system. The great roots, thick as ancient towers, broke the surface of the earth in a complex web. They were the tree's arteries. And Malachi was holding a dagger made of pure, solidified shadow.
"The final hymn is at hand!" his voice boomed, not through the air, but directly inside their skulls. It was a voice of gravel and fanaticism. "The Bloom was not an end! It was a purgation! A cleansing! This false song of life is a cage. We will shatter it. We will return the world to the silent, perfect ash!"
He knelt before the largest root, a massive column of wood that was grooved with the passage of millennia. He placed the shadow-dagger upon it. The moment it touched the bark, the World-Tree convulsed.
It was not a shudder this time. It was a seizure. A wave of tangible, physical pain erupted from the tree, a shockwave of pure agony that threw Lyra and the gardeners off their feet. The silent song didn't just falter; it shattered into a million piercing shards of sound. Across Aethelburg, every sleeping citizen woke with a scream, their minds flooded with the tree's torment. The very air vibrated with a low, guttural groan that seemed to come from the planet's core.
Lyra struggled to her knees, her ears ringing, her vision swimming. The World-Tree was dying. She could feel its life force draining away, sucked into the artifacts the cultists had planted. The leaves on the lower branches, once a vibrant green, were turning a sickly yellow-brown. Cracks, thin as spiderwebs, were appearing in the bark of the great trunk.
Malachi rose, his face a mask of ecstatic triumph. He reached into his robes and produced a final artifact. It was not a shard or a dagger. It was a heart. A heart of black, pulsating crystal, veined with a malevolent red light. It beat with a slow, deliberate rhythm, a counter-melody to the fading song of the tree.
"This is the Withering King's own heart-stone!" Malachi proclaimed, his voice a sermon of damnation. "A fragment of his perfect, unending silence! With this, we sever the final chord!"
He began to walk toward the primary root nexus, the place where the largest roots converged at the base of the trunk. The gardeners were broken, scattered, weeping on the ground. Lyra was the only one left standing. She was no match for him. She knew it with a certainty that chilled her more than the night air. Her sword was useless. Her strength was nothing.
But she had to try.
Pushing past the pain, she charged. She didn't aim for Malachi. She aimed for the heart-stone. It was the source. It had to be.
He saw her coming, a flicker of amusement in his burning eyes. He didn't even draw a weapon. He simply held up a hand. An invisible wall of force slammed into her, lifting her from her feet and throwing her back ten feet. She crashed into a thicket of ferns, the air driven from her lungs in a pained gasp.
"Your devotion is admirable, little gardener," Malachi said, his voice laced with condescending pity. "But you are clinging to a dying world. Let it go. Embrace the peace of the ash."
He reached the nexus. The ground here was soft, rich soil, dark with the tree's nurturing essence. He knelt one last time. Lyra, struggling to rise, could only watch in horror. He placed the Withering King's heart-stone directly onto the bare wood of the central root.
The moment the crystal touched the tree, the world went silent.
The agonized groan stopped. The psychic screams ceased. The discordant song vanished. For a single, terrifying second, there was nothing. A void.
Then, the World-Tree groaned. It was a sound of such profound, soul-deep weariness that it brought tears to Lyra's eyes. It was the sound of a giant giving up, of a light extinguishing. From high above, in the vast canopy that covered the city, a sound like a thousand brittle snaps echoed through the night. A thousand withered leaves, drained of all life and color, broke free and rained down upon the grove. They fell like a funeral shroud, a silent, grey snow upon the sacred ground.
Malachi stood, his work complete. He looked up at the dying canopy, a beatific smile on his face. "Hush now," he whispered to the world. "Hush, and be free."