Chapter 48
"You've been the only one that these anomalies are targeting. This place… it must be tied to you."
As Fleur looked at Abel, her weary eyes seemed to draw inward.
After a moment, she hauled herself out of the shallow water and limped past the wilted flowers.
Abel glanced at Maerci, the concern on his face fleetingly visible, before he followed behind his sister.
"Where are you going? Don't we have to figure this out?" he asked over her shoulder.
Fleur's eyes stayed ahead as she strode forward.
"There's nothing to figure out," she said quietly. "Our passage keeper broke the rules. That's why this garden is dying... Now—" Before she could finish the sentence, the last blue flower at the water's edge coiled and collapsed into a fine dust.
Almost simultaneously, Fleur's right leg jerked as if caught by something unseen.
She lurched forward with a choked gasp.
Abel moved in time, caught hold of her, and eased her to the ground.
At once, her body shook in fits.
She began to heave, her chest rising and falling as though her lungs had been scalded.
The reek of iron and decay, stifling the air, did nothing to ease her labored breathing.
Abel dropped his other knee beside her as his heart pounded in his chest.
"I… I should go destroy the wind chime," he said. His voice trembled despite himself.
"Maybe it will stop this—"
Fleur managed only a weak shake of her head; her eyes had already rolled back.
Panic welled up helplessly inside him.
Then a thin scarlet glow appeared on the horizon.
Within moments, it bled across the sky, as if daylight were smothered by blood-red twilight.
In that sickly light, a faint pattern blossomed under Fleur's skin on her throat.
Abel's mind instantly began to reel.
As a vague premonition stirred amid his thoughts, a voice both distant and near crept into his mind, tender and coaxing like that of a maternal elder.
Within his mind's eye, a great ebony tree stood firmly at the threshold between illumination and darkness.
A phrase slipped into place before he even noticed.
"The Great Nightshade Arbor."
Upon receiving this Reverent, two tears traced his cheeks, leaving behind an almost terrible stir of recognition.
It was as though Abel's mind were being filled with fragments of insight, tumbling in disarray.
The passages between worlds, he remembered, were held together by an unseen pattern called the Lattice.
This was more than mere rules; it was the hidden framework that upheld separate passages of reality.
Each realm was built upon an error inherent to its elements.
He did not recall them directly; his understanding came from the many accounts of their reputation.
One path shifted beneath the water, altering visual distance.
Others scattered the flow of time through mirrored illusions.
There were tunnels as well, which naturally confounded anyone relying on a particular skill.
And if two such distortions overlapped, the weaker one would collapse like a house of cards.
An errant artifact could remain dormant within a passage until triggered by a category of divination from another corridor; only then would the lattice reconstruct itself.
Either way, the common method was to eliminate whatever disturbed the balance.
Yet Abel knew it could not be achieved by carving a hole in the air and discarding the original fragments; those very fragments were what made each passage distinct in the first place.
As he tried to compose his torrent of thoughts, a notion surfaced, offering merely a possibility.
Fragments that could not be discarded might instead be incorporated into the Passage as it regains its course...
It was a far more horrifying prospect, however, when considering that the closer a life was bound to a Passage's cadence, the more it could serve as the fulcrum for altering that Passage itself.
Abel's lips parted in a slight grimace as his pupils contracted with disgust.
What if that meant the flower statues were more than just lifeless objects?
Disturbing, one could explain everything.
Abel blinked slowly, tethering himself to the present.
The "sky" had darkened overhead completely, and only a blood-red twilight remained.
Fleur's eyelids fluttered, and she opened one eye to look at him.
As her lips curved into a weak smile, an ache stirred in Abel's chest, like fingernails being drawn across his heart.
"Abel…?" Her voice finally escaped, closer to a squeak than a proper word.
Abel understood at once and lifted his sister's head, answering agilely, 'Yeah?'
Her knuckles pressed into her vest, whitening, as if holding something back inside.
Then Fleur's arm shot up. Between her slender fingers bloomed a slender arrow of silver light, a primrose resting lightly against Abel's palm.
The arrow's tip glinted as it pointed directly at Fleur's throat.
In that instant, Abel understood: she was struggling to hold something within her, and now appeared poised to slit her throat.
Fleur's eyes opened wide, a look passing through them that was neither panic nor calm.
In an instant, the silver light receded, replaced by a harsh scarlet radiance.
Her lips quivered against clenched teeth.
Abel's demeanor turned serious.
He moved hastily, snatching her hand away just in time; the arrow disintegrated into fine dust across his skin.
Without warning, Fleur's head tilted sideways, her mouth parting abruptly.
She convulsed in a coughing fit as a torrent of deep blue petals spilled from her mouth.
The petals retained their color, like luminous koi in a crimson sea.
She moaned faintly, and her strength seemed to drain from her body.
This time, she did not open her eyes, but her chest continued to rise and fall.
Abel pressed her trembling body against his as the petals drifted around them.
More continued to gush out, forming a steady patter that blanketed the ground in a thin layer of floral snow.
Without warning, the ground beneath them shuddered.
Above, the garden's canopy split apart, and a deluge of withered plants and seed pods descended, smothering everything below.
Abel instinctively lunged over Fleur, shielding her with his body as a massive brownish cloud swept past.
As grit and fragments lashed at them, he gripped Fleur firmly, restraining her from being lifted by the blast.
They remained pressed together as the dust storm waned, lingering in its aftermath for what felt like forever. Abel opened his eyes cautiously.
The garden had fallen into a disquieting silence.
Fleur lay on the ground, dust settling on her face and in her dark hair.
Abel swiftly scrambled to his feet and began sprinting toward the stream.
Cupping both hands, he filled them with cold water.
He hurried back and knelt by Fleur, before frantically lifting her head and pressing the water to her lips. "Drink… please," he whispered.
Fleur turned her face aside, letting tears flow down her cheeks, as the rest of her body remained motionless.
Beyond her suffering, Abel felt a keen pang of anguish as it reminded him how they had both often wept when they'd fallen ill.
Even in The Sequel, disease and even minor colds could still manifest.
Depending on the region, and more importantly, the era, the difficulty of finding a cure without mystic intervention increased significantly.
He swallowed and tried again with strained hope in his voice, "Fleur, please— just a little…"
She could not.
Her body shuddered abruptly for a moment before she shoved his hands away.
"Why not!? Can't you at least swallow?" he pleaded.
She gave no answer nor gesture.
Abel exhaled, then lifted his eyes to take in the surroundings.
The cloud had vanished entirely, leaving deep shadows pooling between the trees.
Nothing seemed immediately out of place—until—
CRASH!
Two voices followed. Two rather familiar voices.
"What the fuck!"
"If you're able to complain, then you can surely walk."
'That sounds like…'
"Right. You could've said that then. Why throw me to the ground?"
"I dropped you."
The two men bickered loudly, their voices carrying even to a distance.
Abel swiftly surmised that the earlier incident had likely been their doing, yet the realization did nothing to quiet the conflicting emotions in his heart.
If anything, it deepened the compulsion to avoid the one path his thoughts had partially disclosed.
Almost predictably, Li, Hoku, and Mars stepped out of a brush on the opposite side of the stream.
Mars was holding a lantern aloft behind them.
Abel called out Hoku's name first.
Simultaneously, they all halted.
Li and Mars exchanged a fleeting glance of surprise. Hoku, however, moved immediately, sending ripples across the shallow water.
Inexplicably, Abel found himself breathing more heavily than before.
To be continued…