The silence in the chamber felt different now—colder, heavier. The Garden no longer whispered. It mourned.
Kael sat on the floor, his back to the obsidian vines, blood drying on his skin. His hand still trembled, not from pain, but from clarity. He had killed. Not just fought or defended—he had chosen death for someone.
He looked at the rose. The one that bloomed after the Silencer vanished. "Unnamed." That word haunted him more than the scream.
He closed his eyes. And the Garden responded.
A sharp sting crawled across his temples. A black petal drifted before him and touched his forehead—then, everything shifted.
He stood in a memory that wasn't his.
Flames. Screams. A burning village under a sky with no stars. Soldiers in white masks dragging children from their homes. And there—at the center of it all—a boy, no older than ten, chained and bloodied, surrounded by corpses.
Kael recognized him.
It was him.
But something was wrong. His eyes were glowing. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. And the villagers—some cried out his name. Others cursed it.
From the edge of the crowd, a cloaked man stepped forward. His voice was cold.
—"This soul must not be named."
The boy's chains shattered. Darkness erupted from his chest, consuming everyone in its path. And then—silence.
Kael gasped, falling to his knees as the vision ended. Blood dripped from his nose. He wasn't sure if what he saw was real, a memory, or the Garden testing him.
But a feeling rooted itself deep inside his chest: He had been erased before.
He stood slowly, walking to the book on the pedestal. Its pages were open now, flickering with ink. A single line had appeared:
"They will call you the Accursed Bloom. But your true name is buried beneath centuries of betrayal."
Kael's fingers curled into a fist.
If he had been condemned before birth… if he had been erased from history… then the Garden wasn't just a curse.
It was the only thing that remembered him.
He turned toward the hall's exit. His shadow stretched long behind him, fanged and thorned.
He would find those who stole his name.
And this time, he would bury theirs.