The first strike came from the sky.
An ocean of spores, thick as smoke, rolled down from the ruptured heavens. They blanketed the world in a suffocating gray mist that choked the lungs and drowned the mind.
But the Thorned didn't stop.
They screamed war cries, blood running down their arms and faces from their self-inflicted wounds. Pain was their armor. Their only weapon against the Bloom's seduction.
Sam ran at the front.
Her throat was raw from shouting.
Her legs burned from exhaustion.
But she ran.
Because this was it.
The final confrontation.
No more dreams.
No more whispers.
Only truth.
They surged into the Bloom's heart, the plaza transformed into a living battlefield.
Vines lashed like whips.Blossoms exploded, releasing swarms of spectral insects with translucent wings and glowing stingers.
But the Thorned had trained for this.
They pierced the insects with spears dipped in their own blood, laughing as they burned them down with makeshift firebombs.
Sam dodged under a vine and drove her knife deep into the pulsing floor.
The Bloom screamed.
Through the chaos, she saw Wang.
Or what had become of him.
His body floated above the plaza now, suspended by a twisting throne of roots and petals.
His face still wore that hollow smile.
But his eyes—Sam saw something flash there.
Something human.
She climbed the throne.
Vines slashed at her.
Thorns dug into her skin.
But she climbed.
And every step closer to Wang shattered more of her defenses, more of her sanity.
She saw visions.
Her home.
Her school.
Her mother's garden.
Wang laughing in the sun.
They're not real, she told herself.
But it hurt to ignore them.
Finally, she reached him.
He opened his eyes.
And she saw him.
The real him.
For just a second.
"Sam…"It was barely a whisper."I tried… to fight them… but they're inside me…"
"I know," Sam whispered back, tears pouring down her cheeks."But I'm going to pull you out. Even if it kills me."
He smiled weakly.
And for a moment, the world flickered.
Reality bent.
Sam saw what lay beneath the Bloom.
A colossal, ancient consciousness.
It wasn't alive in the way humans understood.
It was hunger.Endless.Patient.
It didn't want to kill humanity.
It wanted to replace them.
To overwrite them with itself.
And the key to its invasion… was Wang.
He had been chosen as the vessel.
A human shell to wear while the Bloom spread through Earth's collective mind.
Sam gritted her teeth.
She drove her knife into the veins connecting Wang to the throne.
They screamed in unison.
The Bloom unleashed its final assault.
Torrents of memories not hers.
Lies.
Bliss.
Fake promises of utopia.
Her mind buckled.
She saw herself as a flower.
As soil.
As nothing.
But she clenched her teeth and screamed into the abyss.
"I'm Sam Parkour!I'm not yours!I'm not a flower!"
She cut deeper.
Blood and sap rained down.
The Thorned below roared in defiance, lighting the plaza on fire.
They knew they couldn't win.
But they would die human.
Sam ripped the last vein from Wang's body.
He fell into her arms.
For a moment, the world went still.
He looked up at her.
His eyes… were his again.
"I'm sorry…" he whispered.
And then the Bloom shrieked.
A sound that shattered glass, bone, reality.
The Heart cracked.
Petals folded inward.
The infection writhed.
Dying.
Or perhaps retreating.
Sam didn't care.
She cradled Wang as the plaza crumbled around them.
The last thing she saw before darkness took her was the sky.
Blue.
For the first time in forever.