Chapter 129: welcome home

Chapter 129: welcome home Rose’s lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. "How are you doing, Sasha?" The hooded figure reached up and pulled back her hood, revealing features that mirrored Rose’s own sharp beauty but carried decades of harder living. Scars traced silver lines across Sasha’s left cheek, and her eyes held the cold gleam of authority earned through blood. "So you still remember," Sasha said, her voice carrying surprised approval. "Quite the memory." Rose tested the burning metal restraints around her wrists, feeling them tighten in response. The fire-forged chains hummed with power that made her skin crawl. "Hard to forget family." Sasha’s expression darkened momentarily before she gestured impatiently. "Let’s move out of this forest. You know how badly I hate insects." As if summoned by her words, a cloud of gnats began circling the fiery prison, their wings creating an irritating buzz that made Sasha’s jaw clench. The second figure remained silent, but Rose could feel her eyes burning through the shadows of her hood. Together, they began moving deeper into the forest, Rose’s prison of fire and metal forcing her to walk between them like some exotic prisoner. The trees grew denser as they traveled, their ancient branches weaving together overhead until barely any moonlight penetrated the canopy. Rose’s bare feet found purchase on moss-slicked roots and fallen logs, her captors’ pace relentless despite the treacherous terrain. The forest floor began to slope downward, and soon Rose could hear it—the distant roar of falling water. They emerged from the tree line onto a cliff face that took Rose’s breath away. Below them stretched a natural amphitheater carved from living rock, its walls smooth as glass and gleaming with moisture. Waterfalls cascaded from dozens of hidden springs, their silver streams catching starlight as they plunged toward a central pool that seemed to glow with its own inner light. The water fell from every conceivable angle—straight down from towering heights, spiraling around carved stone columns, misting through natural arches that time had worn smooth. The pool itself was massive, easily large enough to swallow a small village, its surface mirror-calm despite the thunderous waterfalls feeding it. Steam rose from its depths, suggesting warmth that defied the cool night air. Around the pool’s edge, Rose could see the faint outline of structures beneath the water—buildings, spires, an entire city submerged yet somehow alive with flickering lights. "Ready, sis?" Sasha asked, her voice carrying a note of anticipation that made Rose’s stomach clench. Before Rose could respond, they leaped. The fall lasted an eternity and no time at all. Rose’s stomach lurched as they plummeted through rushing air, the waterfalls’ roar drowning out everything else. The impact with the pool should have shattered bones, but the water welcomed them like silk, warm and impossibly gentle despite their speed. They sank deep, Rose’s lungs burning as the restraints prevented her from swimming properly. Just as panic began to claw at her chest, Sasha gestured, and a bubble of air formed around Rose’s head. The water became breathable, somehow maintaining its liquid state while allowing her to speak and breathe normally. The silent companion finally spoke, her voice trembling with barely contained excitement. "I can’t believe it’s really you. Rose the Flame-Walker. Rose the Element-Binder. The stories they tell about you—fighting three battalions single-handed, turning entire armies to steam, walking through dragon fire without a mark." Her words tumbled over each other in a rush of hero worship. "They say you abandoned us when we needed you most, but I never believed it. I knew it had to be lies, knew you’d never—" "Kira." Sasha’s voice cut through the water like a blade. "Shut up." The younger woman fell silent, but her eyes remained fixed on Rose with desperate hunger. Sasha turned to face Rose directly, her scarred features hard with old anger and something that might have been respect. "You are quite the legend, sis," she said, her tone carefully neutral. They began swimming deeper, their movements fluid despite the otherworldly environment. The city below grew clearer with each stroke, its architecture unlike anything Rose had seen in decades. Spires twisted upward like frozen tornadoes, their surfaces covered in bio-luminescent patterns that pulsed with the rhythm of some great heartbeat. A shadow passed overhead, massive and ancient. Rose looked up to see a giant nautilus shell, easily large enough to house a cathedral, its spiral chambers glowing with soft phosphorescence. As they approached, the shell’s opening dilated like a living eye, revealing an interior that defied physics—corridors and chambers that seemed to extend far beyond what the shell’s size should have allowed. Two guards flanked the entrance, their bodies adapted for underwater life but still recognizably humanoid. Like Rose and her captors, they wore bubbles of breathable water around their heads, and their eyes glowed with the same inner fire that all their kind possessed. "Captain Sasha," they said in unison, their voices carrying the weight of military precision. "Welcome back." Rose’s eyebrows rose slightly. "I see you became captain." Sasha’s smile was sharp as a blade. "The position you couldn’t handle properly." The words hit harder than any physical blow, carrying decades of resentment and accusation. Rose said nothing, but her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. They swam through the shell’s opening and into passages that curved and twisted like the inside of some great organism. The walls pulsed with their own light, and Rose could feel the structure’s heartbeat thrumming through the water around them. Other swimmers passed them in the corridors, all moving with purpose toward some common destination. Ahead, a light began to grow—not the soft bio-luminescence of the shell, but something brighter and more fundamental. As they rounded a final curve, Rose’s eyes nearly closed against the brilliance. It was like swimming toward a captured star, the radiance so pure it seemed to burn away shadows from her very soul. They emerged from the shell into open water again, but this water was different—charged with power that made Rose’s skin tingle and her restrained hands ache with suppressed energy. The light source revealed itself as they rose toward the surface: a city that floated in defiance of every natural law Rose had ever known. They broke the surface near a platform that extended from the city’s edge, and Rose gasped as her water-breathing bubble dissolved. Real air filled her lungs, warm and sweet with the scent of growing things and distant rain. The city spread before them like a fever dream made manifest. Children darted through the air on wings of pure flame, their laughter echoing off crystal spires that reached toward the star-filled sky. Some manipulated water into impossible sculptures that hung suspended in mid-air, while others coaxed earth into flowering gardens that grew in spirals around floating platforms. Rose watched a girl no older than ten reshape the very air around herself, creating stepping stones of solidified wind that she used to leap between buildings. Another child rode a torrent of water like a living wave, her element responding to her will with a fluidity that spoke of instinctive mastery. Sasha and Kira hauled Rose onto the platform, their restraints shifting to allow flight while maintaining their binding properties. Together, they rose into the air, Rose’s feet leaving the solid surface for the first time in years. The city unfolded beneath them in all its impossible glory. Every building was shaped like the tip of a massive pencil, their pointed roofs gleaming with metallic surfaces that caught and reflected the elemental displays happening throughout the city. Some structures floated freely, tethered to their neighbors by bridges of crystallized air or streams of flowing water. Others rested on solid ground, but even these seemed to pulse with life, their walls breathing slowly like sleeping giants. Gardens spiraled around the floating towers, defying gravity with casual elegance. Trees grew downward from some platforms, their roots reaching toward others in an intricate web of living architecture. Everywhere Rose looked, the elements danced in harmony—fire warming the air currents that lifted the floating buildings, water feeding the impossible gardens, earth providing anchor points for the most elaborate structures, and air itself serving as both highway and foundation. They flew higher, past residential districts where families gathered on balconies that extended into empty air, past markets where merchants sold bottled lightning and crystallized music, past schools where children learned to paint with liquid starlight. At the city’s heart rose a structure that dwarfed everything around it. The palace climbed toward the heavens in a series of interconnected spires, each one larger than any building Rose had seen in the surface world. Its walls were crafted from some material that seemed to shift between states—sometimes crystal, sometimes metal, sometimes something that might have been crystallized time itself. Waterfalls flowed upward along its surface, defying gravity to feed floating gardens that ringed the upper levels. The palace’s central tower disappeared into the clouds above, its peak invisible from their current height. At its base, courtyards larger than entire cities spread out in geometric patterns that hurt to look at directly, their designs incorporating mathematical principles that existed only in realms where the elements themselves had consciousness. As they approached the palace’s main entrance—a doorway tall enough for giants and wide enough for armies—Sasha’s voice carried clearly through the rushing air around them. "Welcome home, the lost daughter."