"Sister, now you've fallen to the same fate as all the others," Rasna whispered, her voice barely more than breath as she knelt before the Black Velvet Petunia.
Before her, the image sharpened: a flowerbed drained of life, every bloom withered to dust - all but one. The lone survivor, dark and still, was the Petunia. The last to remain.
Rasna rose slowly, the weight of the garden settling deep into her limbs.
"I couldn't even say goodbye..." Her voice wavered, caught between sorrow and heat.
"I couldn't even look into your eyes. Not even once. Not even one. last. time." Her shoulders trembled as her hand tightened - not in rage, but in the ache of all that was left unsaid.
The sunlight dimmed, fading into a dull hush that stretched across the garden like an old bruise. Her fingers slowly unfurled, as if letting go of something she'd kept buried beneath her ribs.
"Sezhar," she whispered, her breath thin, "I'll make sure they feel it - the bloom of their own undoing, slow and silent, like poison flowering from the roots."
Rasna slowly turned her back to the one she called sister by heart. Her chin lifted, lips parted as she tried to draw in air. It caught in her chest - heavy, too heavy. The world around her felt thinner, as if the sky itself was pressing in. She couldn't breathe.
After a moment, the cold edge of the wind touched her face. She inhaled - shallow at first, then deeper - and let it carry some of the weight away. Her head dropped again, her gaze settling on the near distance. Something in her eyes changed. She had locked in. Whatever was ahead, she would not waver.
She stepped forward, toward another flowerbed - long dead, nothing but brittle stems and silent soil. Her voice broke the stillness:"I never met even one of you while you still lived here."Then, softer, nearly swallowed by the breeze:"But I feel your pain all the same. It doesn't go unnoticed."
She turned to the left, still surrounded by a sea of flowerbeds - some clinging to life in soft bloom, but most long surrendered to silence and dust.
"The Void had a place for you long before you ever existed," she murmured, her eyes drifting ahead as her feet began to move - not toward a destination, but simply away.
"The Void... it's a beautiful idea, isn't it? An afterlife. A second chance." Her brow tightened, a faint crease forming between her eyes - a quiet gesture of sorrow, of doubt."But is it really like that?"She paused, voice softer now than even the breeze threading through her hair."I hope it's a place where every dream you've ever had finally comes true."
Rasna began walking again, her gaze sweeping slowly from left to right, as if searching for something lost in the shadows of the garden.
"None of these flowers deserve their fate, no matter the cause," she said, her voice lifting with the weight of finality. "Their end is inevitable - bound to come, no matter how much they struggle."
Her pace quickened, each step striking the ground with growing insistence. Her thoughts, once scattered, began snapping into place, chasing after her like echoes with sharp edges.
She moved faster still, her breaths shortening, shoulders tightening - as if she were walking into a storm she could no longer ignore.
The wind caught her hair now, dragging at it like hands from the past, tugging her back - but she pressed on, driven by something heavier than memory.
Her steps stretched into a full stride, no longer a walk but a driven rush - not to confront the unknown, but to break free of it. The exit pulled at her like gravity, and her thoughts crashed against each other, frantic, trying to keep up with the speed of her leaving.
She was trying to find silence - just one minute of stillness - in a moment that would not stop screaming.
Her steps grew harder, the gravel beneath her feet now a sharp contrast to the softness of the garden she was leaving behind. Every breath she took felt like it was strangling her - tighter, harsher. She was so close now, yet every inch felt like an eternity.
The wind howled in her ears, a cold reminder of what she was running from. But there was no turning back. The path ahead was the only option, and with each passing second, it seemed to stretch farther out of reach.
Her heart thudded against her ribs, too loud, too fast, as if it could not keep pace with her determination. Sweat clung to her skin, despite the chill that seeped into the air. Her body fought against the weight, but her mind was set.
"I will not break," she muttered, the words escaping her lips before she even realized they were there. The garden, the flowers, her sister -they were all voiders now. The world ahead was the only reality that mattered.
Her throat tightened. She felt the memory of Sezhar's absence like a raw wound, gaping, and yet the more she focused on it, the more it seemed to fade. Was that what she wanted? To forget?
The exit was close now. The gate loomed ahead, stark and silent against the darkening horizon. It was almost mocking in its stillness. Every inch of ground she covered brought her closer to something she couldn't name, something she wasn't sure she even wanted to know.
A faint scent of something long dead wafted through the air, making her stomach twist. She tried to ignore it, to press on, but the smell lingered, thick and suffocating. It reminded her of Rassafan - a place that rotted from the inside out.
The city, her city - the one she had never truly belonged to. Rassafan, sprawled across endless, lifeless fields. No streets, no alleys, just cracked earth and hollow wind stretching as far as the eye could see. No matter how far she ran, the silence of it always trailed behind like a curse. Just thinking of it made her stomach tighten with loathing.
"I've had enough," she hissed, her hands curling into fists at her sides. "I'll pull it up by the roots. Every memory, every soul that calls it home. I'll make them feel the rot they fed me."
Her pace quickened, boots pounding dry soil, each step a thunderclap of refusal. She would not carry Rassafan with her any longer. Let it sink into its own dust, faceless and forgotten.
Her legs screamed beneath her, lungs burning with the sharp air of fading twilight. But she didn't falter. The gate - rusted, skeletal - waited just ahead. A threshold. An ending. And something else - something raw and waiting.
She could almost taste the air on the other side. Different. Real. Not the stagnant breath of Rassafan, where even the wind seemed to mourn. This was sharper, cleaner - like the moment before lightning strikes.
"I will end it," she growled, voice cracking. "The city, the fields, the silence. Let them choke on the weight they left in me."
The closer she came to the gate, the more the world behind her began to blur - not from speed, but from rejection. She no longer recognized the shape of what she'd once called home.
Rassafan was no city. It was a graveyard stretched thin, pretending to be something more. It was an illusion built on withered things. And illusions deserve to be shattered.
"I'll salt the fields," she spat, each word sharp with venom. "Make sure nothing ever grows there again. Not even the lie of hope."
One final push - her body driven past the brink - and she crossed through the gate, heart a war drum in her chest. Her breath caught, but she didn't cry out. Only one word passed her lips, low and seething:
"Rassafan..."