The grove shuddered.
Thick roots curled upward from the soil like ancient serpents, shielding Idris and Aman as figures clad in charred grey cloaks stormed the outer chamber. The Witherers had arrived, their eyes glowing with pale hunger—twisted by a desire not to nurture the seeds but to control them.
Aman gripped the Suryansh resin and the pendant still pulsing at his chest. "This grove holds memory," he whispered. "But it also holds power. We can't let them turn that into poison."
Idris nodded and stepped into the grove's center. "It's time."
Together, they placed the three sacred mangoes in a spiral around the glowing Echo Tree. As soon as they touched the ground, a tremor passed through the chamber—soft at first, then rising into a quake. Vines surged from the earth, grasping the Witherers, but not with violence. Instead, the vines showed them visions—echoes of childhood, of wonder lost.
One by one, the Witherers fell still, overwhelmed by the flood of memory. The greed drained from their eyes. Some wept. One disappeared entirely in a blink of light.
Then, the Echo Tree cracked open. From within grew a single bloom—petals of gold, veins of emerald, and in its center, a mango seed floating in mid-air, untouched by gravity or time.
The final seed. The Eighth.
Aman approached it, hands trembling. Around him, visions shimmered—his grandfather smiling beneath a starlit grove, Meera waiting beneath the moon, groves blooming in deserts and on mountaintops. The Earth itself seemed to exhale.
As he touched the seed, everything went white.
When he opened his eyes, he was back in Malihabad. The grove was unchanged, yet subtly transformed—greener, humming, radiant. And in his hand, the seed pulsed with quiet promise.
Not every seed is meant for soil.
Some… are meant for legend.