The gate rose before them like a monument to neglect, a blackened iron frame strangled by vines long since shriveled into brittle cords. Rust clung to its bars like disease, flaking in red-brown scabs. At the arch's crown, half-faded letters spelled EZRA GARDEN, the paint peeling as if the name itself had been trying to escape.
But what struck Renny most was the absence. The gate stood alone, naked of walls, no fence stretching from its sides, no boundary for it to guard.
Renny craned his neck back, squinting. "Damn… looks like nobody's touched this place in forever." His voice dropped. He stepped closer, brushing his fingers along the rusted iron. "But why's it just a gate? What's the point of guardin' air?"
Leila's lips curled into a sly smile, her voice smooth as honey. "Mmm, that's the trick, darling. Garden gates never show their teeth up front. They stand alone, looking weak, harmless… until you step through." She tilted her head, eyes glinting. "That's when they decide if you belong."
Renny shot her a look, half-skeptical. "So it's just waitin' to come alive soon as I cross?"
"Exactly," she purred, stepping closer, her shoulder brushing his. "They hide their beauty in plain sight. Makes the reveal all the sweeter, don't you think?"
Renny huffed, unsure if he liked the sound of that. "A door to nowhere, pretendin' it's got somethin' behind it." He smirked, but his unease lingered. "Kinda creepy."
Leila laughed softly, low and teasing. "Oh, you'll see, love. Creepy things tend to be the most tempting."
They leaned into the gate. Its hinges screamed like a throat dragged across glass, then surrendered, swinging wide to reveal what remained of the garden.
The ground stretched in every direction, cracked open into jagged seams, a pale and thirsty soil that looked as though it had refused seed for centuries. There was no tree, not a single root, no weed dared pierce the surface. The sky above dulled to a colorless haze, pressing the land into a kind of smothered silence.
Renny stepped through, his shoes crunching the brittle dirt. "This… don't even look like a garden. What the hell happened here?"
Leila's eyes roamed the wasteland, her lips curving, though the glint in her gaze was uneasy. "Mmm… gardens aren't meant to be graves. Normally they're wild things, roots tangling, flowers spilling everywhere, like they're drunk on life."
"Imagine that," Renny murmured, his eyes sweeping across the barren waste. "Death in Hell. A place meant for the dead, bein' dead itself." The irony left his mouth bitter.
Dust rose with each step, curling around their legs like restless ghosts. Leila fussed at her dress with a dramatic sigh, swatting the dirt as though it had insulted her. "Ugh. This filth clings like a jealous lover. I should've let you stumble in first, alone. Look at me, ruined already."
Renny smirked faintly, though his eyes stayed sharp. "Too late for that." He reached out, brushing the dust off her shoulders and arms with a careful hand, shaking off the clinging dirt as best he could.
He paused, scanning the wasteland. "So… how we supposed to even kick-start this dump?"
Leila adjusted her shawl with languid grace. "Every garden hides a heart, A center point that anchors its life. Usually it's marked by the great tree, in this case, the Tree of Ezra."
Renny arched a brow. "Middle of all this? Place looks the same in every damn direction. How we know when we're there?"
"You'll know," she whispered, tone rich with certainty, almost like a promise. "The tree should be massive. Too big to miss."
She was right. After what felt like hours of trudging through the sameness, a shape swelled on the horizon, then towered before them.
The trunk loomed like a titan's corpse, thicker than a fortress wall. Its bark had petrified into jagged ridges of stone-gray wood, split open like scars. Renny tried to imagine it alive, branches dripping with green fire, roots drinking deep, the air humming with pulse and power. But what stood before him was only a monument to ruin.
Bones and husks littered the roots, bleached remnants of creatures that might once have thrived here.