🌑 Scene 1: Beneath the Ruins
Darkness.
Not the kind that fades when eyes adjust—but the kind that presses down, heavy and old.
Nkumkani coughs violently, dust filling his lungs as he forces himself upright. Stone and broken metal surround him.
Somewhere above, the world has collapsed.
Hyde groans nearby, pinned under rubble. Monkey sits against the wall, bleeding from the forehead but alive.
Silence follows.
Not peace.Something worse.
>Hyde – …We alive?
Nkumkani doesn't answer. His red eyes glow faintly in the dark as he looks around.
The tunnel wasn't part of the bar.
It wasn't part of Area 51 either.
The walls are smooth. Ancient. Etched with symbols that pulse faintly, as if reacting to his presence.
>Monkey – Tell me this is just…
underground plumbing.
The ground trembles.
Something shifts far below them.
🌒 Scene 2: The Garden's Reach
A low hum vibrates through the tunnel.
Nkumkani grips his head as whispers flood his mind—not voices, not words, but memories that aren't his.
Forests that never existed.Creatures older than language.Roots stretching through worlds.
>Nkumkani – …The Garden.
The symbols ignite.
A crack forms in the stone floor, glowing with the same sickly energy as the Garden Behind the Fence.
Hyde stares.
>Hyde – That thing followed us… didn't it?
Nkumkani clenches his fists.
>Nkumkani – No.
It was already here.
Something watches from the dark.
🩸 Scene 3: The Possession
Elsewhere.
Far from the ruins.
General Nina Havery crawls from beneath shattered rock, her uniform burned, her skin cracked and bleeding. She gasps, dragging herself forward.
>Nina – …I won't die like this…
A shadow pools beneath her.
It rises.
It enters her.
She screams—but the scream twists, reshaping itself into something smaller, sharper.
Her body convulses. Bones snap. Flesh folds inward.
When the dust settles, a boy stands where the General once was.
Black eyes.Too calm.Too old.
He looks at his hands and smiles.
>The Boy – So this is what humanity feels like.
The shadow retreats into him.
Satisfied.
🌑 Scene 4: Above Ground – False Graves
The survivors stand in the desert as smoke coils into the sky.
Sasha stares at the ruins, refusing to cry.
>Sasha – He's not dead.
Sasha stares at the ruins, her voice a hollow whisper.
Sasha: He's not dead.
Dante places a hand on her shoulder, but his touch feels miles away. He looks at his own hands—stained with soot, blood, and a faint, shimmering residue of the "Infection."
Dante: Sasha... nobody could have survived that. Not Nathan. Not the others.
Beside them, Trish Moya sinks to her knees. She doesn't scream. She doesn't sob. She simply picks up a handful of desert sand and lets it slip through her fingers, watching it blow toward the "Limit Border."
Trish: They didn't just die, Dante. They were erased.
She looks up at the sky, where the purple rift is slowly sealing, leaving behind a scar of stars that shouldn't exist.
Trish: Nathan always said the Garden couldn't be pruned. He was wrong. The Garden didn't grow over us... we grew into it.
🧥 Scene 5: The Epilogue – The Echo in the Void
Far away, at the edge of the river where the Merman disappeared, a single object washes onto the shore. It is the Dye Scroll, half-unrolled and soaking wet.
The ink on the page is moving.
It begins to write a new name. Not the name of a hero, or a monster, or a survivor. It writes a single word that pulses with a rhythmic, heartbeat-like glow:
[RESTART]
In the underground tunnels, Nkumkani looks into the glowing crack in the floor. He sees a reflection of himself—but he is wearing a crown of thorns and his eyes are white voids.
In the desert, the Shadow Boy (formerly Nina) begins to walk toward the survivors. He isn't hunting them. He is humming a lullaby.
And deep within the "Empty State," a heartbeat thumps. Thump. Thump.
The war for Redfern Ridge is over. The war for Reality has just begun.
END OF BOOK ONE
THE GARDEN BEHIND THE FENCE A garden that can never be pruned... only replanted.
TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK TWO: BLOOD AND WARCRAFT
END OF BOOK ONE
THE GARDEN BEHIND THE FENCEA garden that can never be pruned.
TO BE CONTINUED…