The root system did not travel through space.

It traveled through want.

Filaments of red-gold light—threaded with the exact frequency of the ninth syllable—slid along every residual connection the bloodline still possessed. They followed the tether that bound Zelda to Kael. They followed the black-vein script that still answered to the eighth syllable’s treaty. They followed the faint, stubborn pack-bonds that had never fully released the Luna who refused to stay dead. Where the filaments passed, generic hunger was refined into specificity, and specificity was invited to become structure.

In the living mansion, the first outward sign was the walls.

Black-vein script that had once crawled in opportunistic patterns suddenly...