Arcadia IX always smelled faintly of warm soil and ripening grain—even at dawn, before the twin suns had climbed over the rolling terraces. Huck Bertis loved that hour most. The world was quiet enough to hear the low hum of irrigation drones, the rustle of wind through the starbarley fields, and the gentle clicking of Yggrith’s claws as the Nightyale bat landed on his pauldron.

  “Morning, girl,” Huck said, brushing a hand over her shadowy feathers. Yggrith purred—if the strange, hollow resonance of her species could be called a purr—and nestled against his neck.

  Behind him, a faint violet flame flickered to life.

  “Another glorious sunrise,” Xa'ru?thoc intoned, drifting up from behind a crate of feed like an overly dramatic ghost lantern. The demi-lich’s skull was small enough to cup in two hands, its eye sockets glowing with shifting, ancient script. “I’m sure it will bring us all nothing but peace.”

  Huck grinned. “You say that every morning.”

  “And someday it will be true. Today is not that day.” The skull rotated, surveying the fields. “I sense geological agitation. Displeasing.”

  Huck leaned on the handle of his farming spade—comically tiny compared to the lava hammer strapped across his back. “You ‘sense’ agitation every time a mole-bird passes gas.”

  “I do not.”

  A beat.

  “…Usually.”

  Huck chuckled, shaking his head. The three of them—the knight, the bat, and the tiny floating undead—made for an odd scene out here in the peaceful farmlands of Arcadia IX, but no one questioned it anymore. Huck had earned the quiet respect of the locals through years of helping, fixing, rescuing, and occasionally blowing something up by mistake and then fixing it again.

  He walked along the edges of the field, checking the roots for pests. The soil was warm beneath his boots—warmer than normal.

  “Hmm,” Huck muttered. “Feels like the thermal vents are running hot today.”

  “Incorrect,” Xa'ru?thoc said. “The heat emerges from below the geothermal layer. Something deeper.”

  Yggrith’s ears twitched. She unfurled her wings and hissed softly into the wind.

  Huck paused.

  The wind was wrong.

  Instead of moving across the fields, it felt like it was being pulled downward—toward the earth, toward the deep.

  A low tremor rippled underfoot, just enough to make the farm tools jingle.

  The ground exhaled a faint green vapor.

  Huck’s smile faded.

  “That’s… new.”

  Xa'ru?thoc’s eyes flared.

  “Oh. Delightful. A subterranean anomaly. I love when the planet tries to kill us.”

  Yggrith hopped onto Huck’s shoulder, hissing louder.

  The soil ahead bulged—once, twice—like something was shifting beneath the topsoil.

  Huck reached for his lava hammer, sliding it off his back with a rumbling metallic groan.

  “Well,” he murmured, planting his feet as the earth began to split open, “so much for a quiet morning.”

  The ground split with a wet, fibrous sound—somewhere between tearing bark and cracking bone. A sliver of green light pulsed from the fissure, casting sickly shadows across the starbarley. Huck stepped back, hammer raised, as the soil pushed upward in a small mound.

  Then it moved.

  From the mound burst a tangle of glistening roots, each one as thick as a rope and tipped with thorn-like growths. They writhed blindly, slapping against the air and soil, searching.

  “Riftroots,” Xa'ru?thoc hissed. “Impossible. They were extinct on this world.”

  “Guess they didn’t get the memo,” Huck muttered.

  Yggrith swooped forward, wings slicing through the fog as she released a burst of piercing echolocation. The sound cut through the root mass, making the vines recoil and twist inward as though stung.

  Huck seized the moment.

  He charged.

  His boots thundered across the dirt as he swung the lava-fueled hammer in a blazing arc. The vents along its head ignited, belching molten light as the weapon connected with the root mass—

  WHUMP!

  A spray of burning plant matter fanned across the ground. The roots shrieked—not audibly, but in a vibration Huck felt deep in his bones—and recoiled, slithering back into the fissure.

  The crack snapped shut behind them.

  Silence fell.

  The only trace they left was the green vapor slowly dissipating into the morning air.

  Huck lowered the hammer, breathing hard.

  “Alright,” he said, wiping his brow. “Anyone want to explain why angry plants are trying to break into my front yard?”

  Xa'ru?thoc hovered closer to the now-sealed fissure. “These were not mere plants. They were dimensional offshoots—creatures anchored to a plane adjacent to our own. Something is pushing them through.”

  “You mean someone.”

  The demi-lich’s eye flames flickered. “Yes. Or something.”

  A second tremor rumbled across the farmland—stronger this time. Fields of grain rippled in waves, bending toward the east.

  Huck frowned. “That direction… that’s the old Irrigation Sector. It’s abandoned.”

  Yggrith screeched sharply and took off, flying low and fast over the crops. Huck didn’t hesitate. He slung the hammer across his back and began sprinting after her, Xa'ru?thoc gliding beside him as the ground trembled again.

  The closer they got, the darker the sky seemed to grow. Not with clouds—Arcadia IX rarely had any—but with drifting threads of green haze rising from cracks spiderwebbing through the soil.

  As they passed the last line of untouched farmland, Huck stopped dead.

  The Irrigation Sector was gone.

  Where once sat pumping stations and storage tanks, there was now a crater-like depression filled with twisting vines, pulsing mounds, and root structures that resembled skeletal trees.

  A low, rhythmic thudding echoed from somewhere deep below.

  Huck’s grip tightened on the hammer. “Looks like the bad news keeps getting worse.”

  Xa'ru?thoc nodded grimly. “Something sleeps beneath this place. Something vast. And it is waking.”

  Huck exhaled slowly. A familiar mixture of fear and duty settled into his chest.

  “Then we’d better go stop it.”

  He stepped forward—and the corrupted ground groaned like a living beast.

  This was no random anomaly. No natural disaster.

  Something wanted Arcadia IX.

  And Huck Bertis was the only one foolish and stubborn enough to walk straight toward it.

  The corrupted ground sagged beneath Huck’s boots like overripe fruit, soft and warm and disturbingly alive. Every step made the vines shiver underfoot. Yggrith circled above, her black silhouette gliding across the green haze, while Xa'ru?thoc floated beside Huck with uncharacteristic silence.

  The crater widened as they descended, narrowing into a yawning tunnel of twisted roots and cracked earth. The air grew humid—thick with the scent of sap, ozone, and something older, something wrong.

  Huck held out a hand. “Yggrith. Light.”

  The Nightyale bat banked around him and released a pulse of violet bio-luminescent sound, illuminating the tunnel ahead in rippling waves.

  What it revealed made Huck’s breath catch.

  Vines lined the cavern walls like veins—glowing green, pumping with slow, rhythmic pulses. Pockets of organic sacs hung from the ceiling. Inside each one, shadows moved like unborn creatures stirring in sleep.

  Xa'ru?thoc’s voice was barely a whisper. “This is not a nest. It’s an artery.”

  “An artery to what?” Huck asked, though a cold guess had already formed in his mind.

  The answer came with the next tremor—so strong the walls shook and loose soil rained down around them. The pulse in the vines sped up, matching the thunder of something enormous awakening below.

  They pressed deeper.

  After several minutes, the tunnel opened into a massive underground chamber.

  Huck froze.

  At the center of the cavern lay a colossal shape—its body a tangled fusion of bark, stone, and pulsing green flesh. Towering root-limbs curled inward like a sleeping giant’s arms. A massive crown-like structure grew from its head, each branch tipped with flickering motes of dimensional energy.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  A Riftroot Titan.

  Huck had read of them once—ancient guardians from another plane, drawn to fertile worlds to terraform them for conquest. Supposed to be long dead or sealed away.

  This one was alive. And almost fully awakened.

  Yggrith screeched, wings flaring in alarm. Xa'ru?thoc’s skull spun slowly, his eye glyphs narrowing.

  “This is no accident,” the demi-lich said. “Something fed power into this creature. Something opened the door.”

  Huck stepped closer—and that was when he noticed the figure.

  Standing near the Titan’s root-heart was a cloaked silhouette, bent over a glowing node embedded in the Titan’s chest. Strange sigils radiated outward, sinking into the creature’s flesh.

  Huck’s hammer lowered a fraction.

  “No way…” he whispered.

  The figure turned.

  Half his face was covered in green-tinted scars, spreading like tendrils from the corner of one eye. His expression twisted from concentration to recognition.

  “Huck,” the man said, voice hoarse, almost desolate. “I wondered how long it’d take you.”

  Huck swallowed. “Malgor…? Malgor Fen?”

  A renegade Maringark. A man Huck once pulled from a collapsing Earth-canyon years ago. A man who’d promised to change. To be better.

  Now he stood within the heart of a living catastrophe.

  “What are you doing?” Huck demanded. “This thing will destroy half the planet if it wakes!”

  Malgor smiled—a tired, broken thing.

  “That’s the point.”

  Huck’s chest tightened. “Malgor—listen. You don’t have to—”

  “Don’t pretend you understand,” Malgor snapped, slamming his palm against the Titan’s heart-node. The cavern shuddered violently. “Arcadia IX took everything from me. I’m taking it back.”

  Xa'ru?thoc muttered, “…I knew today would be awful.”

  Huck stepped forward, raising the lava hammer. “Malgor, I’m begging you. Stop this. Let me help.”

  Malgor’s eyes glimmered with green madness.

  “You can’t help me, Huck. Not anymore.”

  The Titan’s root-limbs twitched.

  A deep, cavernous breath escaped the creature’s chest.

  It was waking.

  Huck’s voice hardened. “Then I guess we’re doing this the hard way.”

  The Titan roared—soil falling like rain, the entire cavern shaking. Malgor raised his staff as vines surged to attack.

  Yggrith dove. Xa'ru?thoc ignited with necrotic flame. Huck charged with the hammer blazing.

  The battle for Arcadia IX had begun.

  Vines lashed out from every direction, snapping through the air like living whips. Huck brought his hammer up in a defensive arc, molten fumes belching from its vents as it intercepted the first barrage. The impact rattled up his arms—these roots were stronger than steel cables.

  “Xa’ru?thoc!” Huck shouted.

  The demi-lich rose higher, violet flames igniting in his eye sockets. “Yes, yes, I see them—no need to shout, you’re right there—”

  He unleashed a whirl of necrotic fire. The flames spiraled outward, clinging to the vines and making them shrivel into ash-scented smoke. Xa’ru?thoc floated with theatrical flourish, tiny skeletal hands forming from swirling embers to direct the spell.

  “Elegance!” he declared. “Precision! Mostly controlled—”

  A chunk of root crashed down inches from him. “—somewhat controlled!”

  Yggrith swooped overhead, wings sending shock pulses through the chamber. Each burst disrupted the Titan’s lesser roots, disorienting them long enough for Huck to wade through.

  He wasn’t aiming for the Titan yet. He was aiming for Malgor.

  The Maringark warlock stepped back toward the Titan's heart-node, robes dragging across corrupted soil. His staff pulsed with sickly green energy, connected to the Titan’s veins through a lattice of glowing sigils.

  “Don’t do this!” Huck yelled, smashing through a root barrier with a thunderous hammer blow. “This isn’t you!”

  Malgor barked a bitter laugh. “You don’t know me.”

  “I risked my life for you!”

  “And I didn’t ask you to!”

  Another wave of vines surged, forming a cage around Malgor. Huck dashed forward, switching grips—hammer in one hand, his electric crossbow drawn in the other. Bolts crackled with blue sparks as he fired into the vine-cage.

  Electricity danced across the roots, forcing them to twist open. Huck lunged through the gap—

  —and was met with a blast of raw dimensional energy.

  The shockwave hurled him across the cavern. He slammed into a wall of tangled roots, the wind knocked from his lungs. Yggrith shrieked and darted to his side, nuzzling frantically. Xa’ru?thoc whirled in a fiery spin, incinerating a cluster of growing pods before they could burst.

  Malgor stepped into the open, staff raised, breathing hard but eyes blazing.

  “You saved me once,” he said, voice trembling, “but you didn’t save them. My people. My home. Arcadia let them die when the famine hit. They had the resources. They just… didn’t care.”

  Huck staggered to his feet.

  “That wasn’t Arcadia’s fault,” he said quietly. “It was the nobles who controlled the exports. But you’re punishing the wrong people.”

  “I’m punishing the system that let them starve!” Malgor roared.

  The Titan stirred—its chest rising and falling in slow, colossal motions. The chamber groaned. Soil cracked like thunder. The heart-node pulsed brighter, feeding Malgor’s spell.

  Huck knew that look in the warlock’s eyes. He’d seen it once in the mirror—after his own village nearly burned when he was a boy. The look of someone drowning in grief and convinced it was righteous.

  “Malgor,” Huck said softly, stepping closer. “Don’t let your pain turn you into the thing that hurt you.”

  For a moment, something flickered in Malgor’s expression.

  Then he slammed his staff into the ground.

  “I’ve already crossed that line.”

  The Titan’s eyes snapped open—massive, hollow, and filled with green fire.

  The cavern ruptured as the Riftroot Titan rose, towering above them. Vines crashed down like living pillars. Malgor raised his staff, merging the flow of energy into the Titan’s core.

  Huck muttered, “I was really hoping he wouldn’t say that.”

  Xa’ru?thoc hovered at his shoulder. “Would you like my honest assessment or a comforting lie?”

  “Which one keeps us alive?”

  “Neither. But the lie will be more inspiring.”

  “Go with the lie, then.”

  Xa’ru?thoc turned to the Titan. “We are absolutely not going to die in the next ten minutes.”

  Huck cracked his neck, tightened his grip on the hammer, and stared up at the monstrosity.

  “Good enough.”

  The Titan roared, and Huck charged straight toward its heart.

  The Riftroot Titan rose like a mountain learning to walk. Its limbs tore free from the cavern floor with explosive cracks of rock and bark, showering debris in every direction. Thick strands of glowing roots hung from its body like ribs, pulsing with stolen life.

  Huck felt the vibration deep in his chest—the rhythmic thrum of something not meant to exist in this world.

  Yggrith let out a piercing cry and shot upward, weaving between drifting chunks of rock. Xa’ru?thoc drifted higher as well, flames brightening to ultraviolet intensity.

  Huck braced himself.

  “Alright, big guy,” he muttered. “Let’s dance.”

  The Titan slammed one of its massive limbs down. Huck dove aside just as the ground erupted, shards of stone bursting like shrapnel. He rolled, came up running, and hurled himself toward the giant’s knee—one of the exposed root-joints.

  “Crossbow!” he barked.

  Xa’ru?thoc flicked a spell; Huck’s electric crossbow materialized mid-air in a flash of violet flame. Huck grabbed it, sliding under a swinging root-limb.

  He fired.

  Bolts of electricity snapped through the cavern, embedding in the Titan’s root-joint. For a moment, the behemoth staggered, lights dimming through its veins.

  Then Malgor lifted his staff.

  The Titan surged back to full strength, roaring as fresh energy poured through the sigils.

  Huck cursed under his breath. “Malgor’s powering it. We have to cut him off.”

  Xa’ru?thoc floated beside him, eye flames flickering rapidly. “Agreed, but he is shielded by a barrier that appears… inconveniently sturdy.”

  “Inconveniently sturdy?”

  “Yes. As in I could gnaw on it for a century and make no progress.”

  “Not helpful!”

  “I didn’t say I would stop you from trying something stupid.”

  Huck shoved forward again, but the Titan’s foot crashed down, blocking the path to Malgor. Vines erupted from the ground, forming a forest of writhing tendrils between them.

  The Titan leaned down, its hollow face looming over Huck—empty eyes glowing like twin portals.

  A vine shot forward.

  Huck barely raised his hammer in time, but the blow sent him flying. He crashed against a boulder, the world spinning.

  Yggrith dove to him, grabbing his collar and pulling him just out of reach of another crushing vine slam. Huck wheezed, laughing breathlessly.

  “Thank you, girl… You’re stronger than you look.”

  She shrieked as if offended.

  Huck forced himself up. He looked at the Titan, then at Malgor—standing behind his barrier, staff dug deep into the creature’s chest, veins of power linking them like a grotesque lifeline.

  “I can’t beat them separately,” Huck murmured. “So…”

  He slung the hammer across his back and drew a different weapon—a heavier one with a reinforced stock and massive barrel.

  The RPG-Sniper.

  Xa’ru?thoc blinked. “Oh, I like where this is going.”

  “I just need a clear line—”

  The Titan shifted, blocking Malgor.

  Huck exhaled sharply. “Yggrith. Distract it.”

  She answered with a sharp call and shot up like a streak of living shadow. She battered the Titan’s face with sonic pulses, making it reel back. It swiped at her with a limb thick as a tower beam—

  Huck took the opening.

  He dropped to one knee. Aimed. Held his breath.

  The Titan roared.

  Huck fired.

  The RPG-Sniper missile sailed through the air with a spiraling wake of electric sparks—and smashed into the heart-node beside Malgor.

  The explosion rocked the cavern.

  Green light collapsed inward. The barrier shattered. Malgor was thrown back, staff spinning from his hand.

  The Titan staggered—its limbs shuddering violently as the energy supply faltered. Vines recoiled instinctively, curling inward like a threatened animal.

  Huck sprinted.

  The Titan’s chest opened in a pulsing crack right above the damaged heart-node. Energy sputtered erratically. Malgor lay on the ground, shielding his face as roots spasmed around him.

  Huck leapt onto a rising root, running straight up its twisting length. He reached the opening in the Titan’s chest and, with a bellowing roar, brought the lava hammer down.

  The impact detonated molten energy through the Titan’s core.

  A thunderous crack split the chamber.

  Light burst outward—wild, unstable, overwhelming.

  The Titan’s roar turned into a long, keening howl as its root-structure fractured from the inside.

  Huck shielded his eyes. Yggrith screamed. Xa’ru?thoc threw up a barrier of necro-flame.

  The Titan collapsed—massive, slow, and final. Its limbs crashed into the cavern floor one by one, shaking the world until it fell still.

  Green light faded. Vines withered. Silence followed.

  When the dust settled, Huck stumbled out of the decaying chest-cavity, coughing, burned, bruised—but alive.

  Malgor sat slumped nearby, staring at the shattered heart-node, expression empty.

  Huck walked toward him slowly.

  “Malgor,” he said gently, “it’s over.”

  Malgor’s voice cracked.

  “…What have I done?”

  The cavern groaned as the last of the Titan collapsed around them.

  Huck reached out a hand.

  Not to fight. To help.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Huck said softly. “We’re not done talking.”

  Malgor hesitated.

  Then he took Huck’s hand.

  The way out trembled above them, but Huck—battered, soot-stained, and stubborn—led them upward, Yggrith and Xa’ru?thoc flanking him like two mismatched guardian spirits.

  They had survived. But Arcadia IX was changed forever.

  The sunlight hit them like a blessing when they finally emerged from the sinking tunnels. Huck squinted, raising a hand as fresh Arcadian air washed over him—sweet with starbarley pollen, warm with the planet’s gentle winds.

  Behind him, the ground continued to collapse, sealing the cavern and burying what remained of the Riftroot Titan under tons of earth. The corruption had already begun to wither, its green haze thinning into harmless dust.

  Yggrith settled on Huck’s shoulder, exhausted, wings drooping. Xa’ru?thoc hovered lower than usual, blue flames flickering weakly.

  And Malgor… Malgor stood staring at the ruined fields, eyes hollow.

  “They’ll never forgive me,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t forgive myself.”

  Huck planted his hammer in the dirt and leaned on it.

  “Then it’s good you’ve got a chance to fix what you broke.”

  Malgor let out a humorless breath. “You sound like I deserve that.”

  “No,” Huck said plainly. “You don’t.”

  Malgor’s head jerked up.

  “But you can earn it.”

  The Maringark warlock looked fragile—like a man standing on the edge of the life he used to have, unsure how to step forward.

  “I wasn’t trying to kill them,” Malgor murmured. “I just wanted Arcadia to feel my pain.”

  Huck nodded slowly. “And now you do.”

  A silence stretched between them, filled only by distant wind turbines and the soft rustling of recovering crops.

  Malgor’s voice shook as he spoke again. “Huck… why did you save me twice?”

  “Because someone did the same for me,” Huck replied, crossing his arms. “And because if I didn’t believe broken people could stand up again… I wouldn’t be a very good knight.”

  Malgor looked away, swallowing hard.

  Yggrith fluttered her wings and nudged Huck’s cheek. Xa’ru?thoc, floating unsteadily, cleared his nonexistent throat.

  “I hate to interrupt this heart-melting moment, but Arcadia’s Wardens will be here soon,” the demi-lich said. “And they do not share your optimism concerning morally complicated warlocks.”

  Huck sighed. “Right. That’s going to be a discussion.”

  Malgor turned toward him, shoulders slumping. “I’ll surrender. I won’t run.”

  Huck nodded. “That’s the first step.”

  They walked toward the distant Warden skiffs approaching across the sky. The shadows they cast grew longer across the field—Huck’s broad and solid, Malgor’s thin and trembling.

  But they walked together.

  As they reached the edge of the farmland, Huck paused.

  “Hey,” he said. “When all this settles? We’re rebuilding this farm sector. You, me, and my two gremlins here.”

  Yggrith chirped defensively. Xa’ru?thoc folded his ectoplasmic arms. “I am not rebuilding fences. I am an immortal necromantic entity.”

  “You can hold nails,” Huck replied.

  “…I hate that you’re right.”

  Malgor blinked at them—an odd, fragile smile forming for the first time since the cavern.

  “You’re impossible,” he whispered to Huck.

  “Yeah,” Huck grinned. “But I’m your kind of impossible.”

  The Wardens landed. The sun rose higher. Arcadia IX breathed again.

  And Huck Bertis—knight, farmer, and stubborn friend—knew this wasn’t the end of Malgor’s story.

  Just the beginning of his redemption.