Chapter 35: Crown of Thorns, Voice of Bloom
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Scene 1: The New Reen (Now: Crown-Bloom)
She no longer touches the ground.
Veins of light run under her skin — not blood, but memory.
Her voice echoes in chorus: the voice of the Bloom, of Reen, and of thousands more.
Crown-Bloom: "You feared infection. I offer unison. One voice. One peace. One forever."
The Vault pulses to her rhythm.
Gift's hand trembles on the Bloombane's hilt.
Matthew steps back, mouth parted, words lost.
Jakku's breath catches, he refuses to accept that this is what Reen has become.
Maiku (almost a whisper): "She still knows us. Somewhere in there… that's Reen."
But no one can look her in the eyes.
Because now, her eyes look through them.
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Scene 2: The Bloom Trial
The Vault closes like a jaw. Locks grind shut.
Crown-Bloom raises her hand. Petals fall upward.
Crown-Bloom: "Before judgment — the trial. Let your truths betray you."
Light swallows them.
Matthew wakes in a perfect world.
Everyone he's lost—alive again. Laughing. Forgiving.
All he has to do… is stay.
Gift is shown timelines like a shattered mirror.
One where he merged instead.
One where Reen lived, untouched.
But none are real.
Maiku & Jakku walk a corridor of memories.
A voice offers them oblivion.
Wipe the pain.
Start over.
Each stands alone.
Each must choose.
Jakku (voice echoes through the darkness):
"I won't forget. Even if it breaks me."
Gift pushes through and snaps back into the real world.
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Scene 3: Maiku's Rebellion
Maiku kneels before a bloom-rooted console. Wires pulse like veins.
His fingers tremble as he sends the signal:
One last SOS.
Lorian's voice curls from a vine:
Lorian (whispered): "Memory is not truth. It is a leash."
Maiku grits his teeth, ignites a shockflare in his boot.
The failsafe.
Just in case Reen becomes something worse.
He makes it out.
His eyes are full of smoke and sorrow.
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Scene 4: The Root Awakens
Beneath the Vault — gears turn.
A long-buried machine stirs. The Root Avatar.
Ancient. Anti-Bloom. Cold.
Jakku's eyes snap open
.
Jakku: "The Bloom was the question. This… is the answer."
The ground quakes.
Something old is coming back.
And it doesn't want harmony.
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Scene 5: The Unwritten Event
From a bend in space — Stem-Born Jakku steps through.
He smiles at Crown-Bloom. Not with love. With purpose.
Stem-Born Jakku: "Come with me. With us. Stem Axis is ready. The time to spread begins now."
Crown-Bloom hesitates.
Then… bows her head.
Crown-Bloom: "I accept."
Gift's heart shatters.
Maiku screams.
Jakku wakes up and bursts into tears.
The rest of the team hold Matthew keeping him safe from whatever these things are.
Their friend — gone.
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Scene 6: The Reunion or The Reckoning
Gift walks forward alone.
Face streaked with tears. Blade in hand.
Gift: "You're not Bloom. You're not a voice. You're Reen."
She pauses.
She blinks.
For the first time in hours.
Then Kenji speaks from her mouth.
Kenji (cold): "She is ours now."
Gift raises the Bloombane.
No more hesitation.
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Scene 7: Jakku's Realization
Jakku dreams. Again.
This time — a sky full of stars.
Reen walks barefoot between them, planting people like seeds.
They grow.
They smile.
They rot.
Jakku wakes, screaming.
Jakku: "She's not merging us. She's harvesting us."
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Scene 8: The Crown Cracks
The Bloombane explodes but....
Nothing happens.
Crown-Bloom twitches.
Memories hit her like bullets: laughter, campfires, tears.
She weeps.
But her tears—they hiss into spores on the floor.
Jakku (screaming, broken):
"Why, Reen? You were our hope. Our light. And now you want to infect what we were trying to save. You were never Crown-Bloom to me. You're still Reen. You're our Reen!"
She drops to her knees.
But Kenji — buried in her body — fights back.
Her tears dry.
Her face hardens.
And the light returns. Not mercy. Bloom.
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Scene 9: The Root Interferes
The ground explodes.
Root Avatar appears in full.
Cold vines. Metallic eyes. No voice — only action.
He grabs Crown-Bloom, cradling her like a stolen bride.
Root Avatar (first words): "You were never meant to lead. Only bloom and break."
Stem-Born Jakku is dismissed.
The Vault splits open. Petals and sparks spiral into the sky.
Matthew wakes up and takes a smell of reality and it tastes like blood.
The team runs. There is nothing left here but ghosts.
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Scene 10: Final Image
The squad stands under a fractured ceiling.
Spores fall like snow.
A sky of roots and flowers now grows above them.
A new world. Bloomborn.
Matthew: "…It's not over."
Maiku (quietly): "No. It's just started growing teeth."
Final line (voiceover style):
"The world above was ending. But down here... something else was being born."
"And that birth took the soul of the only girl who ever believed we could be more than broken."
TO BE CONTINUED...
Narrator(somber, reflective) :
This chapter is the turning point — the moment the cracks become chasms, and belief itself starts to fracture. Reen is no longer Reen. The girl who once fought beside them has bloomed into something beyond comprehension: Crown-Bloom, a living conduit of unity, memory, and quiet domination. What was once about survival has become a philosophical trial — and a spiritual war.
Each character faces a trial not of strength, but of truth. The Bloom doesn't just infect bodies — it tempts souls, replays regrets, offers second chances at the cost of identity. These aren't just hallucinations. They're seductions. And for many, they nearly work.
The intrusion of Stem-Born Jakku and the awakening of the Root Avatar shatter the illusion of peace. Harmony, it turns out, has factions too — and not all seek the same kind. The Bloom is no longer a single entity, but a stage upon which ideologies play out: unity, scattering, control, rejection.
And at the center stands Gift, blade trembling, heart breaking, still believing that something of Reen remains. The explosive confrontation that follows is less about destruction, and more about what it costs to still love the thing that no longer loves you back.
This chapter does not offer resolution — it offers dissonance. It asks: what if saving someone means fighting what they've become? And worse… what if they asked for it?
The bloom has teeth now. And it remembers every name.