The scent of lavender could not hide the stench of the crime at least, not from me.
To the ten thousand souls packed into the Royal Plaza, Saint Dorothy was a vision of divinity. She stood upon the marble dais, her white silk robes billowing in a wind that seemed to blow only for her. Sunlight caught the gold filigree of her halo, casting a benevolent glow over the beggar kneeling at her feet.
"Be healed. The Gods love you," Dorothy whispered. Her voice was a melody, amplified by wind magic so that even the poorest wretch in the back alleys could hear her charity.
She placed a manicured hand on the beggar's festering cheek. Light—pure, blinding, golden light erupted from her palm. The crowd gasped. Men wept. Women held their children up to see the miracle.
They saw the sores vanish. They saw the beggar's skin knit together, pink and healthy. They saw a Goddess giving a gift.
I saw a parasite taking a meal.
From my perch on the gargoyle of the cathedral roof, eighty feet above, my left eye burned crimson. Through the lens of The Gardener, the golden light vanished. In its place, I saw a thick, oily black vapor being torn from the beggar's chest. It wasn't healing magic; it was an extraction. She was knitting his flesh, yes, but in exchange, she was siphoning twenty years of his remaining life force straight into her own veins.
The beggar would be dead within the week, his heart failing from "natural causes." Dorothy would live another decade in eternal youth.
"Disgusting," I murmured, adjusting the collar of my long, black coat.
It was time to prune the garden.
I didn't bother with stealth. Weeds don't deserve the courtesy of a silent death. I stepped off the ledge.
Gravity took me. The wind rushed past my ears, a roaring tunnel of sound, until I activated the Shadow Step just ten feet from the ground. My momentum shifted, turning a fatal fall into a heavy, cracking impact right in the center of the dais.
BOOM.
Dust billowed. The marble floor spider-webbed under my boots.
The music stopped. The cheering cut off as if sliced by a guillotine.
I stood up slowly from the crater. The crowd was frozen, ten thousand pairs of eyes wide with confusion. They didn't understand what they were looking at. I wasn't a knight. I wasn't a noble. I was a nightmare wrapped in the black trench coat of a mourner, my face hidden behind a hood and the shifting shadows of my intent.
Saint Dorothy stumbled back, her "divine" mask slipping for a fraction of a second to reveal raw, reptilian annoyance.
"Who are you?!" she hissed, her voice losing its musical quality. "Guards! Seize this heretic!"
Four Royal Guards in shining steel plate rushed me from the sides, halberds lowered. They were fast.
I didn't draw a weapon. I didn't need one.
As the first guard thrust his spear, I simply raised my right hand and caught the steel tip.
"Rot."
The word was a whisper, but it carried the weight of a grave.
Grey corrosion exploded from my fingertips. In a heartbeat, the steel spearhead turned to rust, then to orange dust. The decay raced down the shaft, consuming the wood, turning it to ash. The guard screamed as the rot reached his gauntlets, crumbling the metal armor into flakes of iron oxide. He fell back, scrambling away, terrified but alive.
I let the dust slip through my fingers. I wasn't here for the leaves. I was here for the root.
I turned my gaze to Dorothy.
She was trembling now. Not from fear she was an Immortal, she had forgotten what fear felt like centuries ago but from indignation.
"You..." She raised her hand, gathering a ball of scorching light. "You filth! Do you know who I am? I am the grace of Oakhaven! I am...."
I closed the distance in a single step.
My hand wrapped around her throat.
The spell in her hand fizzled out. Her eyes went wide, staring into the darkness of my hood. Up close, I could smell it the stolen time. It reeked of old blood and deceit.
"I know what you are," I said, my voice amplified by my own magic, booming across the silent square. "You are a weed pretending to be a flower."
"Die!" she shrieked, clawing at my wrist. Her nails dug into my skin, but I felt nothing. "The people love me! They will tear you apart!"
"Let them," I replied.
I activated the Curse.
"Wither."
The effect was instantaneous and horrific.
This time, I didn't hide it. I wanted them to see.
Dorothy's smooth, porcelain skin turned grey. Her golden hair bleached white, then fell out in clumps. Wrinkles carved canyons into her face. In the span of three seconds, the "eternal" Saint aged three hundred years. Her eyes sunken into her skull, her lips retreating from yellowed gums.
She tried to scream, but her vocal cords had turned to dust.
With a final, dry rattle, her body collapsed into a pile of ash and empty white silk robes.
Silence.
Absolute, suffocating silence.
The beggar, who had been healed moments ago, stared at the pile of ash. Then he looked at me. He didn't see a savior who had stopped a parasite. He saw a monster who had just murdered an angel.
"M... Murderer!" the beggar screamed.
"He killed her!" a woman shrieked from the front row.
"Monster! Demon!"
The roar began. It started as a rumble and grew into a tsunami of hatred. Stones began to fly. A brick hit my shoulder. Mud splashed against my coat. The Royal Guards were rallying, blowing their whistles, calling for reinforcements.
This was the moment. The divergence point.
I could explain. I could tell them she was eating their lives. I could try to be the hero.
But if I told them the truth, they would rebel against the King tomorrow, and the King's army would slaughter them all by noon. They were too weak to know the truth.
So, I would lie. I would be the villain they needed to fear, so they wouldn't have to fear the ones ruling them.
I kicked the pile of ash, sending the Saint's remains scattering into the wind. I spread my arms wide, embracing the hatred like an old friend.
"Weep!" I bellowed, my voice cracking the stones beneath my feet.
The crowd flinched, the sheer pressure of my killing intent forcing them into silence.
"You weep for this?" I laughed, a cold, mechanical sound. "You cattle. You sheep. You think your prayers protect you? You think your love saves you?"
I pointed a gloved finger at the Royal Palace looming in the distance, knowing the King was watching from his balcony.
"I am The Gardener," I declared, my voice echoing off the cathedral walls. "And I have found this kingdom overgrown with weakness. Your Saints, your heroes, your Kings... they are all just dead branches waiting for my shears."
I turned my back to the guards, who were too terrified to advance.
"If you want to live," I said, looking over my shoulder, "pray that I do not visit your garden tonight."
From the deepest shadow behind the statue of the King, a silhouette detached itself. A girl, slender and lethal, stepped into the fading light. She wore a bodysuit woven from the same midnight fabric as my coat, her face obscured by a halfmask of bone.
She didn't look at the crowd. She didn't look at the dead Saint. She looked only at me.
"It is time," she whispered, her voice cutting through the chaos like a cold wind.
I nodded.
She met my gaze, and the shadows at her feet surged upward, wrapping around us like a living shroud. As her magic pulled me into the darkness, I took one last look at the crowd. I saw the terror in their eyes.
They hated me. They feared me.
Good, I thought, as the void swallowed us whole. Now the Royals will be forced to hunt me, and I will be waiting.
The First Pruning was complete.