Uprooted Novels & Stories

The pan that had held emptiness now held the multitude, the chorus, the collective mass of the weave, and The iron roots released him. Not with a snap, not with a violence, but with a slow, deliberate withdrawal, the metal retreating into the trunk of the tree as if returning to sleep, to dormancy, to the geological patience from which it had been roused.

I stood there, rooted, as the floorboards beneath me began to splinter, and the first green shoot pierced the wood, curling around my ankle. I didn't try to run anymore. There was nowhere to go, and after all, it had been a long time since I felt truly at home. I closed my eyes and let the roots take hold.

—designed to dissolve the Sombra’s obsidian-hard structural walls. Avery Vane-Thorne stood at the edge of the Detroit ruins, watching the "Frontier of the Green." In the span of a single afternoon, a patch of violet moss the size of a city block turned grey and brittle. Beneath it, the "Old Soil" was erupting. It was as if the Earth was performing a "Somatic Purge." Thousands of dormant seeds—some having waited decades in the parched, shadowed ground—were suddenly activated by the chemical shift.

When I woke up, a young nurse pushed the door open and walked in. She said, "The sample didn't make it. It shattered completely. IVF won't be possible anymore." "What about Hannah? How is she?" The nurse looked at me, her eyes full of sympathy. "Her uterus was removed. She won't be able to have children in the future." I froze for three seconds. Then I burst out laughing. I laughed until tears poured out, until my wounds tore open, until I looked like a madman from a psychiatric ward.

" I lifted the dead plant. The soil was bone dry, and every leaf had yellowed or fallen. I had bought that pothos on the day I moved into the new house, and Marcus had helped me water it for the first time. He had said, "Jules, this plant is like us. Once it takes root, it never moves." Roots. He had torn every one of mine from the ground.

“I’m sorry,” I say “You’re probably right, it is all my fault. It’s my fault they’re dead. It’s my fault they’re all dead.” I close my eyes, tears flowing freely. “All dead?” He questions. “The couple, I don’t even know their names,” I choke out in sobs, “My mom,” I fall to my knees, “My mom died because I was gone and they couldn’t find me,” I don’t want to say the last one but I have to get it out. “My brother, when we fought, I saw red and next thing you know my claws slashed across his throat.” I’m crying so hard I can’t see. “I didn’t even know I had claws, he always used to hit me but I never hit back, but after he came at me this time I- I couldn’t help it, I went to hit back but it w

Something unbreakable. Something ready to rise.

Orlando and I had been together for ten years. I'd looked after his sick mom, sweating out a fever of my own, and where was he? Knocking back drinks with Rosalind, playing therapist to her broken heart. I swallowed my pride at work, getting chewed out by my boss, while he spent the night companying Rosalind because she had cramps. Then, when I got the news my mom had passed, I tried calling him, desperate for support. But nope—phone off. After a wild goose chase, turns out he was at Rosalind's graduation. That was it. I gave up. But Orlando wouldn't let go. Red-eyed, he begged me for just one more chance.

The Roots Weep Mirra knelt at the base of a gnarled elder oak, her knees pressing into damp soil. Her fingers traced the moss that clung stubbornly to the bark. Normally, the moss was lush and springy, cool with life. A comfort. A promise of the tree’s health, of the forest’s endless resilience. But today, it crumbled beneath her touch. Brittle. Dry. As if some unseen blight had brushed through, scouring away vitality in its wake.

she whispered, her voice barely a breath. She tried to crawl toward him, but the ground beneath her suddenly felt soft. Not moss-soft, but liquid. She looked down and saw the obsidian roots of the World-Tree beginning to dissolve. The corruption she had used to save Micah was now eating the very foundation of the Under-Whisper.