The Root Novels & Stories

Roar! Following a furious roar, a thick tree root emerged from the ground and soared into the sky. Then, it slammed down onto Alex ferociously. “D*mn, it’s really huge!” Standing, Alex looked up to take a look. The next second, he abruptly picked up Shado and teleported to the side instantaneously before the tree root as huge as a house hit him. Boom! As the tree root fell, the ground shook tremendously. The overbearing root ruthlessly apart tore the vast land of Nine Heavens Tribe apart as though a whip had struck from Heaven.

Before the data. "Children who have lost parents describe feeling unanchored," she said. "Untethered. The language of roots comes from them, not from us. We asked. They told us what it felt like." She paused. "Rooted isn't about replacing what was lost. It's about establishing new anchor points. Stories as anchor points. Community as anchor points. The understanding that other people have experienced this specific terrain and found ways to navigate it." She looked at the board. "Roots don't replace what's gone. They establish what remains."

At the center of the cavern stood a massive, gnarled tree trunk — uprooted, suspended above a pit of black sap. It pulsed. Veins of red light glowed through the bark, like arteries. At its base, symbols burned — old, tangled, and shifting — trying to hold it in place. Emily gasped, stumbling slightly. Clara caught her. But her eyes were fixed on the tree. “That’s not a tree,” she whispered. “It’s a root. The First Root. The thing my people tried to bury. It’s not dead. Just… bound.” Ashani approached slowly, blade lowered but ready. “Varethkaal’s body isn’t a body. It’s an idea. A seed. And that”—she pointed to the trunk—“is where it waits to bloom again.”

Stooper crushed a handful of dried leaves into one of the bowls, then added drops of thick red liquid from a small bottle. "This is called Moon root and Alpha’s blood,” Stooper explained. “It helps reveal connections of the soul.”

Rogue chuckled softly and hugged me. "We are pereche Hera and I believe that with all my being," he said firmly and I nodded telling him I felt the same. "Do you know anything about a small black root," I asked him curiously and he furrowed his brow and nodded. "Yes, it's the ancient ones' fetuses, they are small black roots that need to take root in their host," he explained bitterly and I swallowed uncomfortably. "How do you...wait, did Vlad give you one," he asked roughly and I nodded my head.

And at the center a massive tree. Its roots twisted through the stone floor like veins. Its bark shimmered faintly, and instead of leaves, it had small glowing orbs, like floating moons. I stared. “What… is this?” Alaric stepped forward. “This is the Heartroot,” he said. “It connects every ruler of our kind. Past, present, future. Every king and queen of the Lycan lines has come here.” I couldn’t speak. He turned to me, voice quiet. “You asked why I chose you.”

--- **The Last Forest** The Rootmother's domain is a cathedral of trees fused with steel, their leaves razors, their roots veins of molten ore. The air thrums with a low, resonant hum-the Forest's immune system, attacking intruders. The Rootmother waits at a stone altar, her antlers dripping sap that hisses where it hits the ground. *"Stormbearer,"* she greets, her voice vibrating in my ribs. *"And the Hollow King's shadow. How... amusing."*

The root shriveled. Not from heat and not from force and not from any visible application of any external thing to the root's surface. It simply lost something, in the way that things lose something when that something is drawn out of them, and what had been solid and fibrous and alive became dry and contracted and reduced in a period of seconds that was too fast to be natural decay and too deliberate to be anything else.

“Then what do we fight? What do we prepare for?” Elizabeth entered the chamber, golden cloak billowing, Solbrand at her side. “We prepare for The Root.” Murmurs swept through the hall. Lucian narrowed his eyes. “What is it?” Elizabeth stepped forward. “A name whispered by the rift. It predates gods, predates even the Moon Goddess. It calls itself the Root of All Laws. Order incarnate. Balance enforced by obliteration.” The Alphas fell into stunned silence. Then one spoke. “If the Forgotten God represented chaos, and this Root is ordering...”

"We’re talking about seven billion people, Mom. We don't have a bridge. We don't even have a 'Boat'." ​"We have a 'Port'," Leo said, looking at the grey woman. "The Architect-Prime. She’s the 'Root-Access'. She was built to be the gateway between the High-System and the Local-Files. If we can 'Invert' her connection, she becomes the bridge." ​The Assembly of the Alphas