Chapter 4: Roots In Rot

The Dendro were once the gentle breath of Denzaga—stewards of harmony, protectors of ancient groves, interpreters of the soil’s pulse. Their connection to nature was not forged through dominance but through symbiosis. They lived as caretakers of a realm untouched by steel, guided by intuition and ancestral memory. But harmony is fragile when the roots themselves begin to lie.

The first signs were subtle—leaves whispering in voices not their own, mushrooms forming eerie sigils, and dreams of twisted vines binding suns to silence. The Dendro thought the wilds were evolving. They thought they were listening to ancient wisdom.

They were wrong.

Buried beneath their sacred groves was a hunger that had waited too long. The remnants of the Void, long dormant beneath the Seal, had begun to bleed upward, infecting the very roots the Dendro worshipped. The jungle no longer pulsed with life—it throbbed with want. And the Dendro, once guardians of balance, began to mistake corruption for communion.

Nature does not care what feeds it. And neither, now, do they.