The stench of rotting petals hit Kael first.
He stumbled as the guards shoved him into the prison's inner sanctum—a cavernous greenhouse where the air shimmered with suspended pollen. Above, a glass dome refracted sunlight into sharp-edged shadows that fell like prison bars across the cracked stone floor. Below, roots writhed through the fractures, blooming into a field of bloodflowers.
Black. White. Rust. Gold.
Each one marked a different death.
At the center of it all stood a woman, her arms elbow-deep in a prisoner's open chest like she was tending soil. She hummed softly, her breath misting in the filtered light.
Warden Sarnel. The Gardener.
Her halo flickered—a once-holy circle now rusted at the edges, light bending strangely through the lenses of her brass goggles. When she turned, Kael saw her eyes.
The pupils had dilated into perfect, petal-black blooms.
"Ah," she whispered, her voice sweet with rot. "The Hollow Seed arrives."
She pulled her hands free. Something wet hit the floor.
"All prisoners are cataloged by what grows near them," Sarnel said, circling Kael like a wolf in bloom.
She tapped his manacles with a scalpel-thin blade. The saint-steel sang—a single, discordant note. The white flower rooted in Kael's palm trembled violently.
Sarnel gestured to the greenhouse tiers, her voice calm, almost maternal.
"Black Blooms grow in the lower pits. Bloodthirst and rage—useful, if trimmed often.
Rustflowers for the addicts and madmen. Their dreams fertilize the metal.
Gold Petals… for the political seeds. Suspended in time, caged in glass."
Then she tilted her blade toward the darkest corner.
There, three figures knelt in silence. Their chests were hollowed like Kane's. Their skin was pale bark. Their breath came slow and wrong.
Sarnel smiled, almost wistful.
"The Soulless Tier. Where we plant the seeds of dead kings."
Kael said nothing. The flower in his hand tightened its grip, vine curling slightly around his wrist.
They strapped him into a glass chamber—one of the bloom spheres.
Inside, the air was thick with floating pollen. Each mote glowed faintly, pulsing with hidden memory.
Sarnel's voice echoed through the vents. "Let's see what sprouts from you."
The flower screamed.
Not in pain.
In recognition.
The pollen ignited. Kael's vision twisted.
— A bear with crown-shaped scars, pacing a frozen battlefield.
— Kane, younger, whispering to dying roots. White blooms shriveling in moonlight.
— Himself, kneeling before a throne made of swaying bloodflower stems, his shadow stretching longer than the crown could reach.
Then—
Crack.
The glass fractured.
Sarnel staggered back. Her goggles shattered.
A system alert blinked in Kael's mind.
[System Alert: Anomaly Detected]
[Flower Designation: Echo Bloom]
[Effect: Temporal Echoes Amplified x900%]
Kael collapsed.
His mouth opened.
Black petals poured out like bile.
That night, silence ruled the prison. Even the roots stopped twitching.
Kael lay in his cell, drenched in cold sweat, hand still curled around the flower in his palm.
It pulsed once. Then again.
Kane's voice came through the roots.
"She's lying."
"The flowers don't grow toward light."
"They grow toward you."
Outside, the bear moved.
Its claws scraped the ground.
Then—boom.
It threw itself against the glass wall again.
This time, the fracture spread. Sharp and slow.
Like a vine curling around a throat.