The wind carried the scent of blossoms long dead.
At the edge of Hanatera's forgotten valley, beneath a sky the color of pale rosewater, a lone spiritwalker knelt before a shrine swallowed by moss. Time had eroded the goddess's name from its stones, yet the petals scattered across the altar still shimmered faintly — a memory refusing to die.
The spiritwalker pressed their hands together, whispering the ancient prayer:
> "Hikari motte, hana saku —
With light, let the flowers bloom."
The sigil upon their palm flickered. A faint glow — like sunlight through thin silk — pulsed once, then dimmed. It was the mark of the Blooming Sigil, the ancient covenant between mortals and the spirits of nature. It had not shone in generations.
The elders of Amehana had called it a sign.
"The Sakura Spirit stirs again," they said.
But what they did not say — what the spiritwalker had learned only in whispers — was that she stirred not in joy, but in grief.
The forest before them, once the heart of spring, now stood in silence.
The Forest of Silent Petals.
No birds sang. No wind moved.
Only the petals fell — slowly, endlessly — black and crimson against the pale mist. They drifted upward and downward at once, as though uncertain which way was sky.
The spiritwalker stepped past the threshold of the first torii gate. Its wood was cracked and darkened by age, its sacred paper charms hanging in tatters. As their foot touched the ashen soil, the world changed.
The air grew heavy, and whispers bloomed between the trees.
Voices. Faint. Echoing. The kind that didn't belong to any living tongue.
> Do you still seek her?
Do you remember her song?
Do you think she remembers you?
The spiritwalker froze. Their breath fogged the air — and in that brief cloud, they saw the shape of petals swirling in miniature, like a reflection of the forest itself.
Something was watching.
Something ancient.
A figure appeared between the trees, half-seen in the mist. Long hair — pale pink, fading to red — drifted like a slow-burning flame. Her robes were tattered silk, dark as twilight, threaded with dull gold. Around her, the air shimmered faintly with falling petals that turned to ash before touching the ground.
The spiritwalker's hand went instinctively to their charm blade — a weapon more sacred than steel.
Then she spoke.
> "You carry the scent of spring."
Her voice was soft. Hollow. Like the echo of a lullaby once sung to a dying child.
> "Tell me… do the trees still bloom beyond this grave?"
The spiritwalker hesitated. "They do," they said. "But they fade quickly now. The world grows colder each year."
A faint smile touched her lips — sorrowful, wistful, knowing.
> "Then the world remembers me still."
As she stepped closer, the mist parted, and her eyes came into view — luminous violet, but fractured with light, as if glass hid a dying flame within.
> "Do you know who I am?" she asked.
The spiritwalker bowed slightly. "You are Sakura no Hime — the Spirit of Blossoms."
Her gaze darkened.
> "No. Not anymore."
The petals around her turned black. A cold wind swept through the trees, carrying whispers that stung like memory.
> "They burned my groves.
They silenced my song.
They buried me beneath their wars.
And still they pray for my return."
The spiritwalker's sigil glowed faintly, reacting to her grief.
> "I was light," she whispered. "Now I am only shadow. Tell me, spiritwalker — why have you come here? To worship what your kind destroyed?"
The spiritwalker met her gaze. "To understand what we lost. To restore what we can."
Her expression wavered — not anger, but something far deeper.
For a moment, her hand reached out — trembling, as though caught between blessing and curse. A petal drifted from her palm and landed upon the spiritwalker's wrist. It shimmered briefly… then vanished into smoke.
> "Then you will see," she murmured, turning away. "You will see what the world did to me… and what I became for it."
She vanished into the mist. The forest stirred for the first time in centuries — the ground pulsing faintly with buried roots awakening.
The spiritwalker followed the trail of dark petals deeper into the forest, unaware that with every step, they were crossing not just into a cursed grove…
but into the memory of a goddess who had once loved the world too much to let it live without her.
And above them, the wind carried a whisper that only the dead could hear:
> "When the last petal falls, the world will bloom — or burn." 🌸