The gates opened without a sound.
Tomora stepped into the garden behind Tala, and the world changed.
Sunlight poured through wide gaps in the towering canopy above, scattering across the ground in fractured gold. Flowers unlike any he had ever seen bloomed in impossible colors—deep blues that glowed faintly, purples threaded with silver veins, petals that breathed as if alive. Vines climbed stone pillars and wrapped themselves lovingly around ancient trees, their leaves humming softly with elemental energy.
The air itself felt warm and full, thick with life.
Tomora stopped walking.
His breath caught in his throat.
For a moment—just a moment—the weight on his chest loosened.
He didn't realize he was smiling until his lips trembled.
A memory struck him without warning.
Patricia's hands pressed gently into the soil, dirt beneath her nails. Her green hair glinting in the sun as she laughed softly. "Plants remember kindness," she had told him once, guiding his small fingers as they planted a seed together. "If you hurt them, they feel it."
Another memory followed—him as a child, wrapped in creeping vines that lifted him playfully into the air while he laughed, the world safe and warm.
The present rushed back in all at once.
Tala had already seated herself on a carved stone bench at the center of the garden. She lounged there casually, one leg crossed over the other, watching him like a predator watching prey stumble into a trap.
"Hmph," she muttered. "You really like this stuff, huh?"
Tomora didn't answer.
He stepped forward, slow and reverent, as if afraid the garden might vanish if he moved too quickly. He knelt beside a glowing blue flower, its petals pulsing faintly in rhythm with his breath. Carefully—so carefully—he brushed his fingers against it.
The flower warmed beneath his touch.
For the first time since the chains closed around his wrists, he felt something close to peace.
Then Tala spoke again.
"Cut them."
The words were flat. Casual.
Tomora froze.
The garden seemed to hold its breath.
"…What?" His voice barely carried.
Tala leaned back, folding her arms. Her eyes were bright—not with anger, but with interest.
"All of them," she said. "Every flower. Every vine. Every tree. Flatten the whole place."
Tomora turned toward her slowly, disbelief written across his face.
"Why?" he asked, his voice trembling despite his effort to steady it. "They're… they're beautiful."
Her lips curved upward.
"Because I said so." She tilted her head. "And because I want to see if you'll obey me—even when you hate it."
Something twisted in his chest.
Electricity stirred beneath his skin, a reflexive response to the surge of emotion—but the slave collar tightened instantly, metal humming as it crushed the spark before it could surface. Pain flared at his neck, sharp and warning.
Tala's voice hardened.
"Do it," she snapped. "Or I'll have my father sell you to the lowest bidder in the Market. I'm sure someone would enjoy breaking you in a little more roughly."
Tomora's hands curled into fists.
He looked at the flowers again. At the trees. At the living, breathing proof that the world could still be kind.
Then he lowered his head.
He picked up the gardening blade.
The metal felt cold. Heavy.
The first cut was the hardest.
The blade sliced through the stem of the glowing blue flower with a soft, wet sound. The light dimmed instantly, fading as the petals collapsed into the dirt.
Tomora flinched as if the blade had cut him instead.
He moved to the next.
And the next.
Each swing felt heavier than the last. Stems snapped. Vines were severed, recoiling as if in pain. Leaves fell like dying birds, littering the ground in a growing carpet of ruin.
Tears blurred his vision, slipping down his cheeks and splashing into the soil.
He didn't wipe them away.
He kept cutting.
Branches cracked beneath the blade. Trunks groaned as vines tore free. The garden's hum faded into silence, replaced by the dull thud of destruction.
Behind him, Tala watched.
She smiled.
"Good boy," she said softly. "You're finally learning your place."
The last flower fell.
Tomora stood alone in the wreckage, chest heaving, hands shaking so violently he nearly dropped the blade. The garden that had once glowed with life was now nothing more than broken stems and crushed petals.
The air felt empty.
Hollow.
The sunlight seemed colder.
The camera of the world—if there were one—would have closed in on his face then.
On the tears drying against his skin.
On his lowered gaze.
But deeper still—behind the obedience, behind the grief—something else stirred.
A spark.
Small.
Quiet.
Unforgiving.
Hatred, slow and patient, took root where the flowers had died.
And unlike the garden…
This thing would grow.