The ground trembled once more before splitting open beneath Elara's feet.
She was swallowed into the void until she fell into… a silent garden.
A garden of graves.
Each grave was marked with pale, withering flowers, their petals falling one by one as though time itself was being counted down.
Elara stepped slowly, her eyes scanning the stone markers.
—The first name she saw was her mother's.
—The next, the names of comrades she had fought beside on the battlefield.
—And the deeper she walked, the more she realized: every grave bore the names of those she had failed to protect.
Her heart tightened, her hands trembled.
Then, a voice rose from the shadows beneath the graves—
a raspy voice she knew all too well. Her mother's.
> "Child… why weren't you there when I needed you most?"
Elara flinched, tears rising to her eyes.
"No… I tried… I—"
Other voices followed.
Her fallen comrade, cut down in battle:
> "We died because you hesitated for just a single heartbeat…"
Her lost lover, whom she never saved in time:
> "You chose power… but never chose love."
The voices layered over one another, forming a tribunal of condemnation.
Every word was a blade, stabbing deeper into her heart.
She collapsed to her knees, clutching her chest, feeling as if she might break.
But then—amidst the storm of accusations—she saw it.
A single flower still glowing faintly.
Not gold, not shadow, but silver.
The flower whispered softly, like a breeze passing through:
> "Elara… you cannot save every life.
But you still have the right to move forward."
And now, she had to choose…
Choices of the Fourth Petal ✦
1. Accept all her failures → They become scars etched into her forever, but grant her an unshakable inner strength that neither shadow nor light can break.
2. Reject the voices entirely → Smother the pain with shadow's power, sealing her heart so it can never be hurt again—but risk becoming nothing more than the shadow itself.