The Elders processed this. Obsidian-Veil's ancient spires hummed with the slow grinding of consideration. Iron-Root's foundations shifted uneasily. Garnet-Flame's fire flickered between outrage and reluctant interest.
Azurite-Tide was the first to respond. "You propose we send you. The Bridge Between Falling Things. You would extend yourself into the Grove and attempt to resonate mending into a calamity."
"Yes."
"You are one Facet old. You barely survived the wound. The Grove is a continent-scale seed. It will consume you."
"It might," Kaelith-tok acknowledged. "But I am Trueborn. My resonance is fluid enough to match its frequency without being dissolved by it. I felt this during the wound. It reached for me, and I understood it. I could not have fought it then. But now I have a Facet. I have a shape. I have something to offer it that it has never encountered: a bridge."
Diamond-Truth spoke again, and its words fell like a hammer on glass. "And if you fail, the Grove will consume a Trueborn. It will grow stronger. It may become unstoppable. You are proposing to risk not just yourself, but the entire Reach, on an untested theory."
Kaelith-tok met Diamond-Truth's clarity with its own. "If I do nothing, the Grove will reach the anchors eventually. Iron-Root's siege will fail because sorrow is patient. Garnet-Flame's assault will fail because fire cannot burn grief. Moonstone-Dream's vision has already shown this. What I propose is the only option that is not merely delaying the inevitable."
A long silence. The Elders communed in frequencies Kaelith-tok could not hear, their resonances intertwining in a private harmonic web. Kaelith-tok waited, its bridge-strands steady, its newly solidified Facet humming with quiet certainty. It had not come to this council seeking permission. It had come to explain what it was going to do. The seclusion had crystallized its heart's path, and that path led into the Grove.
Finally, Obsidian-Veil spoke. "You are Trueborn. The council cannot command you. We can only advise. My advice is this: do not go alone."
Citrine-Hymn expanded its golden fan. "I will accompany the young one. My resonance can translate its intent, amplify its song. If it is to convince the Grove of mending, it will need a voice that carries."
Azurite-Tide flowed forward. "And I. Adaptation is my nature. If the Grove changes, I can change with it. I will be the shield that buys the bridge time to form."
Garnet-Flame burned brighter, then dimmed, a gesture of reluctant respect. "I do not understand this path. It feels like surrender dressed in poetry. But I have been wrong before—Moonstone-Dream's visions remind me of that. I will guard the Reach while you attempt this. If you fail, I will burn what remains."
Moonstone-Dream's light pulsed once, a rare display of certainty. "I have seen a new vision. Not of fire. Not of falling. I saw three crystals descending into shadow, and one of them glowing brighter with every step. I did not see the end of the descent. But I saw light. That is more hope than I had before."
Diamond-Truth, the last to speak, vibrated with a frequency that was almost gentle. "Go, then. Prove that mending is possible. If you succeed, you will have done something no Seln'vyn has ever done: turned a seed of the Overlord into something that can heal. If you fail, your death will be a lesson. Either outcome serves the truth."
Kaelith-tok accepted this with a quiet resonance of gratitude—not for the blessing, which was cold comfort, but for the company. Citrine-Hymn and Azurite-Tide. A voice and a shield. It would not descend alone.
The descent began at the edge of the Anchor Plateau, where the tethers of the Reach stretched down through the clouds like strands of condensed starlight. Far below, visible only to those who could sense fractures, the Weeping-Grove waited. Its pale trunk and black leaves spread across miles of consumed stone, and its first sob echoed up through the anchor-threads like a sickness in the world's throat.
Kaelith-tok extended its bridge-strands, feeling the fracture the Grove had torn in the earth. It was vast, a chasm of silenced resonance where stone had forgotten how to sing. To cross it would be to enter a place of absolute loss.
Citrine-Hymn settled beside it, golden points singing a preparatory chord. "I will translate your intent into a frequency the Grove can perceive. Remember: it is not evil. It is in pain. Speak to its pain, not its destruction."
Azurite-Tide rippled into a streamlined form, its liquid-crystal body flattening like a shield. "I will deflect the first waves of its sorrow. You will have moments, not minutes. Make them count."
Kaelith-tok gathered its resonance, centering itself in the truth of its Facet. It was the Bridge Between Falling Things. It had been shaped for this—not by accident, not by the Veiled Dominion's manipulation, but by its own choice. The Overlord's servants might have triggered the wound, but Kaelith-tok's answer was its own.
It dove.
The clouds parted. The wind screamed. The Grove's weeping grew louder, and Kaelith-tok felt the sorrow reaching up to greet it like an old friend who had always known it would come.