Chapter 23: The Root That Spoke in Tongues

  The eye did not belong to a beast.

  Nor a man.

  Nor a spirit.

  It belonged to the tree.

  And yet, it looked at Shen Liang as if it recognized him.

  As if it had been watching through time, not for who would come, but for what they would carry.

  “You are te,” it said again.

  Its voice was neither male nor female.

  Neither loud nor quiet.

  It was the sound of something that had not spoken in so long it forgot how not to speak.

  Shen Liang stood still.

  He did not speak.

  This was not a pce where words were free.

  The eye blinked.

  The bark shifted — not opening, not peeling — but rearranging, as if sentences were being written into the grain.

  “You wear his root,” the voice said, more softly now.

  Shen Liang looked down.

  At his chest.

  At the faint ridges beneath his skin — the strange pattern that had burned into him when he swallowed the seed from the mountain in his youth.

  “I do,” he said.

  The bark groaned.

  Not in pain.

  But in recognition.

  “He was a fool,” it said.

  “And you are worse.”

  Shen Liang bowed.

  “Then let the greater fool try again.”

  There was no reply.

  Only the slow curling of the branches, like old fingers flexing after too long in stillness.

  “I was his shame,” the tree said. “His wound. His secret.”

  “I know.”

  “He fed me blood.”

  “I will feed you choice.”

  That silenced even the windless pin.

  Then the tree ughed.

  A dry, fking sound like bark breaking under winter frost.

  “You speak as if the roots cannot tell what you are.”

  Shen Liang took one step closer.

  “I am nothing yet.”

  “And that is what makes you dangerous.”

  A crack ran from the base of the tree to the edge of the root-pin.

  From it came not darkness, but nguage — hundreds of overpping voices, speaking in tongues that had not been heard since empires were bones in the earth.

  Each sylble coiled around Shen Liang.

  Not trying to crush him.

  Trying to test him.

  Trying to decide if he was soil…

  …or seed.

  The tree whispered.

  “You may ask one question.”

  Shen Liang did not hesitate.

  He had carried this question for longer than he had his name.

  “Why did he abandon the sky?”

  The root-pin fell still.

  The branches stopped flexing.

  The eye closed.

  And the tree replied:

  “Because he thought it would forgive him.”

  (End of chapter)