Smoke came on the third day.
Not from the city's riots, not from looters or stray gunfire.
This was different.
Deliberate.
Systematic.
I smelled it at dawn — a stench like scorched plastic and rotting roots.
The kind of fire that doesn't warm.
It erases.
The garden knew before I did.
The lavender folded its leaves inward, sealing its scent.
The mint went still — not dormant, but holding its breath.
Even Thistle, who never shut up, fell silent.
"They're back," he said at last.
"The ones who think ash is clean."
I climbed the rusted ladder to the roof, the wood rough under my palms, and looked east.
Beyond the broken highway, where the old forest had once stood before developers cut it all down, a new growth had risen after the System came — wild, tangled, alive.
Vines thick as arms. Trees with bark like chainmail. Flowers that glowed at night, feeding on radiation.
Now, it was burning.
Not natural fire.
This was chemical — green-tinged, oily, spreading like a disease.
Men in gray uniforms moved through the undergrowth with flamethrowers, methodical, unhurried.
They weren't scavenging.
They were purifying.
And at the center of it all — a man.
He didn't wear armor.
Didn't carry a weapon.
Just a long coat, black as charred wood, flapping in the heat-warp wind.
He stepped forward, and the earth darkened beneath his boots.
A sapling, brave or foolish, reached a tendril toward him.
It didn't burn.
It rotted.
In seconds.
From root to leaf.
Collapsed into black dust.
"Hollow," said the oak.
The word wasn't spoken.
It was pushed from the soil, like a root breaking stone.
"He calls himself the Purifier. Says he's cleansing the world of corrupted life. But he doesn't purify. He spreads decay. He is the wound that never heals."
I didn't move.
But the garden did.
Every plant facing east — turned.
Not toward the fire.
Toward him.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
Like a dog recognizing rabies in another beast.
And beneath my feet, the seed — the one that sank into the soil three nights ago — pulsed once.
A slow, deep beat.
Like something waking from centuries of sleep.
I knelt, pressing my palm to the earth.
And for the first time, I listened not to the plants —
but to the land itself.
It wasn't just soil.
It was memory.
And it remembered this man.
Not by name.
By taste.
Centuries ago, before cities, before steel, there was a clearing where the first sacred grove stood.
Men came with axes.
With fire.
With prayers to gods who demanded sacrifice.
One man led them.
He didn't swing the axe himself.
He blessed it.
And when the last tree fell, he poured poison into the roots and said:
"Now it is clean."
The land never forgot.
And now he was back.
Not the same body.
But the same hunger.
The same conviction.
The belief that life could be too wild to deserve living.
I stood.
The wind shifted.
For a heartbeat —
just one —
his head turned.
Not toward the nursery.
But toward the old oak.
And I swear, across the distance, through smoke and time,
he smiled.
Then he raised his hand.
And the fire surged.
I didn't scream.
I didn't run.
I placed both hands on the soil.
And whispered the only thing I could:
"Hold on."
And the garden answered.
Not with vines.
Not yet.
But with silence.
A stillness so deep it felt like the world was drawing breath.
The seed pulsed again.
And this time —
I felt it reach back.