✦⟡⟲⟡✦
There are two kinds of plants in the world of mana.
The first are called Enerleafs, hardy plants that drink in mana as easily as water.
Over centuries, they learn to echo the elements around them: fire, frost, storm, and so on—until they blossom with a simple elemental power.
The second kind are rarer still: Manaweave Plants.
Unlike Enerleafs, these plants are fragile, their survival hinging on environment or the hand of a careful cultivator. Yet if they endure, they do not merely echo elements... they embody them.
Sunlight, moonlight, even emotions like pride or despair—anything strong enough to saturate their roots may be woven into their very being.
Most mortals never see a Manaweave plant in their lifetimes. But deep beneath the ocean, one such plant endured.
It should not have survived at all.
The seabed where it sprouted was no garden but the hunting ground of the Allseer Horde, a tide of aberrant beasts worshiped and feared by the other creatures.
The Allseer are not predators of flesh, but of truth.
Their bodies writhe with unblinking eyes, from jaw to spine, from fin to gill, each orb watching endlessly.
With vision sharp enough to split motes of dust, they pierce illusions, sense the faintest tremor of life, and even skim the shallow surface of thought.
To be beneath their gaze is to feel as though one's soul is laid bare, every secret poised to be devoured.
The Allseer are not mindless devourers.
They do not eat everything they notice. Instead, their nature compels them to seek what resists their sight: creatures cloaked, hidden, or veiled.
Anything too ordinary simply bores them; they drift past such things the way a scholar ignores a pebble.
And so the little Manaweave sprout, insignificant and plain, escaped their hunger only because it was unworthy of attention.
Yet there lies the cruelty: it was never ignored. It was watched. Always.
Thousands of eyes scoured it day and night, never blinking, never turning away.
For a plant, there is no mind to despair, but mana is not mindless. It shapes, it bends, it remembers...
Over centuries, the tiny trickle of mana within the plant reacted to that crushing tide of scrutiny.
And just as a tree bends under constant wind, the plant's mana bent under constant watching, evolving into the only path left: erasure.
So it hid. Not consciously, but as instinct. Like leaves reaching toward the sun, its being reached toward the opposite—toward vanishing.
When the Allseer sought it, they found nothing.
The horde howled with eyes that could see through mountains, yet the little weed had simply stepped sideways from reality itself.
For ages, it survived as the Nameless Bloom, a plant unseen, untouched, unremembered.
But nothing is eternal. Eventually, the Allseer migrated, driven by some greater current of perception, leaving the seabed empty of their impossible gaze.
The plant remained. Its instinct to vanish never faded, for such instincts cannot be undone.
It lived, invisible, as monsters roamed past it, as divers swam unknowingly above, as centuries turned to another thousand years.
And then something strange happened.
Though it had no mind, the endless weave of mana within it carried the echo of time, of longing.
Mana is shaped by desire, and for a millennium, the plant's essence had known only one thing: to be unseen.
In the absence of the Allseer, that instinct twisted. What was once survival curdled into hunger—the opposite of hiding.
It wanted, desperately, to be seen, just a glimpse, even once.
Of course, it could not betray its concept. It could not abandon erasure, no more than a flame could refuse to burn.
Instead, its yearning reshaped itself into something new. The Nameless Bloom changed again.
It became the Whisp, the Plant That Yearns to be Seen.
The Whisp does not reveal itself. Its form remains erased from the world. But those who eat its blossom inherit a shard of its paradox.
They do not gain the power of erasure; instead, they gain the sight needed to pierce erasure.
To see what hides, to strip the unseen bare.
This was the Whisp's twisted answer to its own hunger: if it could not reveal itself, it would create a witness capable of seeing what the world would not show.
Some say the first mortal to eat the Whisp will go mad, unable to close their eyes to truths meant to be hidden.
Others whisper of cults who seek it still, believing the Whisp's power can strip the veils from gods.
The Whisp remains on the seabed, still yearning. Waiting for someone—anyone—to see it.
⛧
"Well, not anymore," Dorian smirked as he casually played with the plant in his palm.
Ashen sighed. "Can't you handle it with more care...? After hearing this plant's incredible journey, I suddenly feel sorry for it..."
Dorian patted him on the back. "Haha, you sure still know how to crack a joke, Asher. It's a plant, no need for sentiments."
Ashen stared at him silently before shaking his head, helpless. "Well, what did I expect from the guy who plucked it..."
He then gave him a curious look. "So, how did you stumble upon this, anyway? And isn't it too extravagant for a gift, even from you, uncle?"
"What do you mean by 'how did I stumble upon this'?" Dorian asked back, confused. "I was specifically searching for this..."
"Haah...? Wait..." Ashen looked back, stunned. "So you spent the last 12 years searching for this... for me?"
"Of course," Dorian spoke as if it were a matter of fact. "I noticed that those special eyes of yours were constantly draining your mana, even affecting your circuits, so I went out to look for something to fix it."
He went silent for a beat, eyes narrowing. "Though... I guess I was too late in the end. The damage spread too far... even beyond your eye circuits..."
A somber mood descended around them as soon as he finished his diagnosis.
Ashen felt conflicted right now. Even though Dorian's efforts amounted to nothing in the end, he still felt grateful.
Not to mention that he spent the last decade searching for such a scarce thing, just for him... and here he was, whining about him not saying goodbye and greeting him with such a sour face after he had done such a thankless task.
This was simply too embarrassing.
Ashen's current feelings could be summed up as an ostrich wanting to bury its head in the sand to avoid a reality too awkward to face.
"Of course...!" Suddenly, Dorian's tune did a one-eighty. "It isn't completely useless!"
"Ah...?" Ashen froze.
"I found that this plant is a lot more impressive than I thought after I picked it up... I'm sure it could at least fix the circuits from your eyes leading to your heart, so you could circulate mana around that path..."
He cast him an innocent look. "It could even give you an innate ability too... probably."
'This asshole...' Ashen's good feelings for this guy suddenly vanished. He was sure he had been this dramatic, making him feel disappointed and then happy, just to mess with him.
With twitching lips, he barely held back from spewing a slew of curses. Dorian was the one with the gift, after all.
"...Thank you... uncle. I don't know how I'd repay you for this... but are you sure this thing is safe to eat?"
"Yes, of course! With me being here, what could go wrong?" Dorian patted his own chest twice.
But the unkempt hair, Hawaiian beach shirt, and shorts, coupled with those Japanese geta at his feet, completely out of place, didn't make him one bit reliable despite his boast or the long list of titles.
"...Right," he sighed resignedly.
"C'mon, don't be a pussy. Here you go. Eat, eat, bon appétit~!"
He didn't even have time to hesitate before it was shoved down his throat.
"Hkkk—!"
"Man~ I went through all that to get it for you... can't have you get cold feet and back down on me now, can I?"
"Cough—cough—kkhhk!"
"Even with me suppressing its characteristics, you being able to see it is a sign that you are fated with it, so be at ease~"
'Fuck... I'm dying...'
"Those eyes of yours are really something to be able to glimpse a bit of Whisp... well, the plant will probably be glad to be eaten by you, since it's the plant that longs to be seen, after all..." Dorian's goofy voice kept echoing in the empty classroom.
'Shut up already...'
"...It's because you saw it, before eating it... get it?"
'Ahh... god... kill me...'
And with that, he completely lost consciousness.
"Finally out of it, huh?" Dorian sighed as he casually placed a hand on Ashen's eyes.
And with that motion, all the mana inside Whisp rushed to his eye sockets before concentrating on his eyeballs.
They lingered there for a moment before bleeding back into the old path of his broken circuits.
The broken lines within him... the severed conduits from his eyes to his heart, were quietly touched, re-drawn with strokes of light too fine to witness.
His heart throbbed once, and in that pulse, everything seemed to connect back—not as it once was, but better.
Every circuit from his heart leading to his eyes was refined over and over again by the enormous amount of mana gathered by a manaweave of over two millennia.
The Whisp's mana knew exactly where to settle, how to fold into what was broken, until all became whole again, and then went even further.
When the last thread was mended, Dorian exhaled a soft, relieved sigh.
He finally felt unburdened. Now the rest was up to Ashen—what to make of this boon.