Chapter 43: The Garden's Memory
The next morning, dew clung to the petals of the Garden like tears refusing to fall. The team awoke with solemn hearts, but a quiet resolve had begun to settle into their bones. Something about facing the Remnant had stripped them raw—but also left them reborn.
Veyla led them down a spiraling path of crystalline steps, buried beneath the central chamber. The air grew colder the further they descended. What once smelled like blooming flowers now held the scent of earth, age, and faint smoke.
"Where are we going exactly?" Kohana asked, her voice breaking the silence.
Veyla didn't turn. "To a memory the Bloom itself locked away. A place the Originals called Nemeton. A sanctuary… and a grave."
The name echoed inside Riku's mind. Nemeton. As if he'd heard it in a dream once, or from a voice that never reached his ears.
"What was buried there?" Rei asked.
Veyla paused.
"The ones who resisted the Bloom. The ones who believed it wasn't a gift… but a curse."
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Hours Later – The Border of Nemeton
A jagged ridge of trees loomed ahead, but they weren't alive. These were petrified remains—stone trunks frozen in their last breath, their branches like reaching arms caught mid-scream.
Kaoru touched one.
"No signs of life. Not even decay. Like time itself was ripped out."
"It was," Veyla confirmed. "The Originals deemed this memory too dangerous. They broke the timeflow here. But it still remembers."
They passed through the ridge. As they did, the air changed.
Cold, sharp, and weighted.
Voices—not loud, not clear—but whispers. Echoes. Pleas.
Riku stumbled for a moment. The pendant around his neck flared briefly. In his mind's eye, he saw flashes—
A woman in silver armor, standing against a burning tree.
A child holding a shattered seed, crying.
A battle cry drowned out by silence.
Then gone.
"You felt it too?" Airi asked, beside him.
"Yeah," Riku said. "This place… it knows."
---
Deeper Within Nemeton
The group entered a clearing. At its center stood a great stone structure—half-temple, half-cocoon—its surface etched with spiraling glyphs.
Veyla approached it and touched the stone.
"This is the Mural of Refusal," she said. "Carved by those who denied the Bloom. Their stories were not allowed to survive. But this mural… is memory made stone."
The surface shimmered. Glyphs began to glow.
And then… it showed them.
The mural didn't just display history—it made them feel it.
Each of them was pulled into a vision.
---
Riku's Vision
He stood at the edge of a battlefield. Thousands lay fallen. Flames licked the sky. In the center, a figure stood—his brother, Haru, younger, desperate, screaming as he tried to close a rift in the sky.
"Don't follow this path, Riku," his voice whispered—not to him, but to the world. "Don't let it happen again."
---
Airi's Vision
She saw herself in a different world, walking among civilians with golden eyes. People cheered her name—but her heart felt hollow. A voice echoed: "Is this the power you wanted? Or the loneliness that came with it?"
---
Kaoru's Vision
A burning village. His parents. His younger sister. All lost. And above them, the sigil of the Bloom… on his own chest.
---
One by one, the visions faded.
They fell to their knees, panting.
"What… was that?" Toma muttered, gripping his chest.
"The truth," Veyla said softly. "Nemeton doesn't just preserve memory. It makes you confront what you're becoming."
Sera looked shaken. "So if we keep going—if we seek the next Seed—we're not just chasing power…"
"We're chasing the parts of ourselves we've buried," Rei finished for her.
Riku stood, despite his trembling legs.
"Then we'll face it. All of it. We're not here to become gods—we're here to understand what went wrong… and never let it happen again."
Above them, the mural flared once more—its center now glowing with a symbol none of them had seen before:
A cracked bloom.
And the word beneath it:
"Ashenroot."
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