Scene 1: Fallout
Silence.
Ash drifts. The battle's glow fades into grayness.
Maiku is half-slumped, knuckles still warm with fire. Matthew lies against a broken pillar — blinking, breathing, barely.
No one speaks.
Then Reen drops to her knees.
One by one, they all follow. Jakku. Gift. Even Maiku. No pride now. No heroes. Just the broken remains of people.
They cry.
No shame. No restraint. Just all of it — out.
After the silence returns, Reen digs into her bag for gauze. A shattered vial slices her finger.
Blood wells — then vanishes. Her skin knits. Too fast.
She stares at her hand. Says nothing.
Above them, the clouds swirl. Once white. Now veined and yellow. Creatures fly overhead — wrong shapes, wrong movements. One has three wings. One has no face.
Jakku watches them.
Jakku : "The world's already inhaled."
---
Scene 2: The Bloomed Child
They find her by the river — barefoot in moss, humming to herself.
Azula Kioto.
Eight years old. Bloomed — but lucid. Her eyes have no whites, only fractals. But she smiles like a person.
She speaks names she shouldn't know.
Azula : "Jakku. Reen. Matthew. Maiku. Gift. You are near the axis. You bleed like branches."
They circle her, unsure. Gift tightens his grip on his daggers. Jakku gets ready his sword. Matthew readies to use his claws and Maiku though weak is ready to use his blade.
Reen kneels.
Reen : "Are you in pain?"
Azula: "Not anymore. I'm part of something now."
She looks at the clouds.
Azula : "The Stem Axis lives. Still rooted. Still dreaming. In the Cradle."
Jakku: "Where?"
Azula: "Below. Deep. Where even the old bones rot."
Reen's eyes shimmer. Something about the child—familiar. Like a mirror with cracks.
Reen offers her a drink.
Azula refuses.
Azula : "I already drank what I needed."
---
Scene 3: Reen's Choice
That night while everyone sleeps, Reen leaves.
She says nothing.
She follows the spores — like breadcrumbs — into the dead marsh.
There, an Elder waits. Kneeling. Bloomed. Face like a split melon, but eyes full of knowing.
He speaks softly:
Elder Bloomed One : "You came."
Reen : "Huh ??"
Elder Bloomed One : "Reen I know you have come to fill your stomach."
Elder Bloomed One : "So may I?"
Reen nods.
He opens his chest — not flesh. Petals.
Elder Bloomed One: "Take them. See the web."
She presses her hands to his heart.
Memories flood her: hundreds. Thousands. A world of song, grief, joy, infection, surrender.
And then—Bloompath.
She awakens with new eyes—her eye color changes they've become the color of a rainbow. She can feel everything — the minds connected by bloom. She can walk them. Travel thoughts. Swim memories.
She gasps.
Behind her, a branch cracks.
Gift stands there. Watching.
He says nothing.
Just turns. Walks away.
---
Scene 4: The Descent
They find the temple at dawn.
Half-sunken. Bloom-encrusted. A staircase descends into the crust of planet Julio, behind broken marble doors.
The air changes inside — heavy. Tilted. Gravity shifts. Their steps echo wrong.
Memory hangs like mist. Jakku sees himself as a boy — then as a corpse — then not at all.
Matthew mutters to himself. Maiku's fire flickers even when he's not using it.
On the walls: murals.
Civilizations not their own. Cities made of treebone. Thrones shaped like roots. All gone.
Consumed.
Gift: "We're not the first."
Maiku: "We won't be the last."
They descend.
---
Scene 5: The Whisper of the Stem Axis
It starts as a pulse.
Low. Deep. Like the planet has a heart.
The tunnel walls sweat. Then grow mouths — tiny, grotesque mouths — whispering all at once.
Names. Places. Lies. Regrets.
Maiku hears his father's voice — long dead.
Matthew hears Kaguya — telling him to give up.
Reen, somewhere far above, suddenly gasps — the Bloompath pulses.
And Jakku.
He freezes.
Because the voice doesn't come from the wall.
It comes from inside his head.
And it knows him.
To Be Continued.....
---
Final Line:
> "One whisper spoke Jakku's name. Not from the wall… but from within his mind."
Narrator:
Chapter 29: "Whispers of the Stem Axis" is not a march forward—it's a spiral inward.
What remains of the heroes are shadows limping through ash. Their weapons drip more memory than blood. Their hearts, battered by loss, still beat only because they must.
In the wake of victory came revelation: the infection was not vanquished, merely peeled back. The "root" was a lie—the Stem Axis, an ancient intelligence, dreaming deep beneath the world, is the truth they now chase.
The Bloomed Child, Azula Kioto, speaks with the clarity of madness and divinity, marking them as branches, not saviors. Her words are not threats, but prophecies. And Reen—perhaps hungriest of them all—chooses to see. To consume memory. To become more than human. Her transformation is quiet, beautiful, and terrifying.
The descent begins—into history, into hallucination, into the marrow of the planet where truth no longer obeys physics. Murals tell of forgotten empires. Whispers know every regret. And somewhere deep, the Stem pulses—waiting.
Jakku, always the one to act, now hears the voice not as a warning—but as a call.
Not from the walls. From within.
Chapter 29 is a turning point—where the world stops reacting to the infection, and begins listening to it.