Upon hearing the elder, the younger man gasped.
His eyes glead with greed.
"So... so this is... a celestial treasure!"
"A celestial treasure of incalculable value. If we sold even one of these flowers, we could buy... anything."
The elder, listening, slowly nodded.
"Yes. But it is a cursed treasure. That is why their species disappeared. So say the flowers were hunted to extinction. But the more accepted version is that they were abandoned."
"Rejected by the heavens and the gods... I don’t know. But what I do know is that they truly vanished without a trace until today."
He then turned his gaze to the flowers. Staring at the ones murmuring all around.
"These voices... they are proof that they truly existed, just as the legends said."
The two n looked at each other.
And then greed overca fear.
Without hesitation, they began to harvest.
Each flower plucked released one last sigh of lant before withering in their hands, leaving behind only a faint glow.
They moved quickly, like starved beasts, filling sack after sack with the translucent flowers.
Cairen watched in silence, his heart inexplicably heavy.
The voices diminished as the field was ravaged for days.
Until finally, after five days, only one flower remained.
It was just a few steps away. Unlike the others, translucent, reflecting mories, this flower was gray.
Its petals are opaque and heavy, as though lifeless.
And in the center, instead of a face, there was only a simple mark. A closed eye. An eye Cairen had seen a few tis before.
Cairen felt sothing tugging at his attention. Involuntarily, he took a step toward that flower.
It was as if it were calling him.
And in that very instant, his vision shifted.
The field was still there, but it looked different. The sky was not the sa, the wind carried a different scent. The flowers were all present.
As if he had been dragged thousands of years into the past.
Ti now flowed strangely, too slow and too fast all at once.
He saw travelers cross the field, warriors, peasants, and cultivators.
Each one who passed was surrounded by the flowers.
Their mories were drained in fragnts.
Monts of pain, of joy, secrets, lies, loves, and hatreds.
The Nhamara blood from it, hoarding those mories.
But that small gray flower did not do the sa.
It did not settle for fragnts like the others.
Cairen saw it grow slowly. Each ti soone drew near, not only mories were absorbed.
The entire person was swallowed, body, mind, and soul.
Their remains devoured by the soil, transford into nutrients for the field.
One by one, those who wandered too close were buried there.
And with each death, each soul, the flower changed.
While all the other flowers remained translucent, carrying broken mories, that one flower gradually darkened.
Becoming a shadowed gray.
Cairen shuddered.
He could feel the connection deepening. As though that flower were staring directly at him.
And then, he heard it.
A soft, feminine voice, whispering in his mind.
Not ant for him in particular, but he could hear it.
"I want to leave..."
"I want to walk... to see the true world..."
"I want to grow... I want to be free..."
It was the desire of that flower.
A being imprisoned in roots, begging to rise.
But ti passed, and nothing changed.
The field filled with more mories, yet the little gray flower remained alone. Bound, until one day... the two n appeared.
Cairen saw them again, now back in the present mont of the vision.
They had harvested every other flower. Only the gray one remained.
The younger approached, grinning from ear to ear.
"This one looks even more special and valuable."
But before his hand could touch it... sothing happened.
A sound tore through the air.
Not a scream, not a whisper. But an explosion of voices.
All the mories, all the souls, all the fragnts held by the flower, stolen, burst out at once, rging into a single chorus.
The sound invaded the n’s minds.
They scread, covering their ears, but it was useless.
The sound was inside their heads.
Blood stread from their eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. Their bodies convulsed until finally collapsing onto the ground, dead.
Their spirits and wills shredded to pieces by the chorus.
And then, the gray flower trembled.
Slowly, ever so slowly, it rose from the soil.
Its roots snapped, tearing free from the earth.
The eye at its center opened for the first ti.
But there was no light. No purpose.
In its long wait, it had already forgotten itself. Forgotten what it once wanted, forgotten the reason for its existence.
And in renouncing its origin, in darkening its own na, the Nhamara flower was reborn.
No longer as an extinct flower, nor a treasure. But as sothing that had abandoned itself.
At last, it had beco a Fallen existence.
The field shattered like glass, vanishing.
Cairen blinked, breathless, sweat dripping down his forehead. The echoes of the field of whispers and the Nhamara flower still murmured in the depths of his mind.
A new mory had clung to his soul. But the real world returned. The castle room stood solid around him once more. And for a mont, those countless years within the vision felt real.
{Fallen Bloodline successfully implanted: Fallen Nhamara Bloodline (Grade 2)}
Then ca the expansion.
Not a physical expansion, not an expansion of Qi. Sothing far deeper. Like a sixth sense.
As if a sense long dormant throughout his entire life had been violently torn from the darkness and forced to awaken.
His soul expanded.
It was an indescribable sensation. Suddenly, his ordinary vision, his hearing, his touch...
All seed crude, unnecessary tools. He no longer needed to see in order to know. He could feel.
The world unfolded before his newborn perception.
He felt the maids walking nervously through distant corridors. Heard the whispers of their thoughts like faint buzzing.
He sensed the focused vigilance of the guards at their posts, their bodies firm and grounded.
He felt the tiny, persistent life, rats in the walls, spiders in forgotten corners, the slow breathing of a slumbering beast hidden beneath the castle.
And then, he felt two presences rushing toward his room at high speed.
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