At first, they told Jace the pain meant progress.
Each morning, the caretakers strapped him into the Thorn Chamber — a vast hollow orb built from living roots that pulsed like the inside of a lung. The vines didn't pierce skin at once; they slid into his pores like liquid light, threading into nerves, drawing memories to the surface.
"The plant must taste your past before it can rewrite it," said Seraphiel.
"It's cleansing you."
The process left him shaking, gasping, sometimes weeping without knowing why. Each session stripped a little more of his doubt away, leaving room for something new: stillness.
When he resisted, the vines constricted.
When he surrendered, they filled him with light — soft at first, then electric.
The pain didn't matter after the third day. The power did.
"Again," Seraphiel commanded.
Jace stood in a circle etched into the garden floor, surrounded by shimmering air thick with spores. He focused on the vine coiled around his wrist — dark, veined with silver — and tried to feel what lay beneath it.
"You are the Tenth Bloom," she said. "Born of Verdant Wrath, the seed of judgment and protection. Every plant is a thought of the Mother. Yours is her need for order."
He closed his eyes. The hum of the vine synchronized with his heartbeat. And then he felt it — the pulse extending beyond himself, stretching into the ground, into the network webbed beneath Eden's Vein.
The soil answered.
Roots broke through the surface, twisting upward like serpents of black glass. The air trembled with their movement. A soldier standing too close stumbled backward, eyes wide as one of the roots coiled around his ankle.
"Stop," Jace breathed, pulling instinctively.
The vines obeyed, retracting with a hiss.
Seraphiel clapped once. "Perfect. Emotion tied to will. You command obedience through balance. Too much restraint, and the roots starve. Too much feeling, and the roots consume. Do you understand?"
He nodded weakly. "You're making me a weapon."
"No," she said, smiling. "We're helping you remember what you already are."
Days turned into rituals. He trained in the Hall of Bloodlight, a cavern lined with mirrors that reflected countless versions of himself, each at different ages, different moods, different fates. Every reflection whispered something unique—futures that could be, might be, or already were.
One whispered:
"He'll never forgive you for living."
Another:
"Kill him before he kills everything."
And between them, faintly, his brother's voice:
"Jace, please. Don't let her change you."
He slammed a fist into the glass, fracturing the reflection. Silver sap leaked from the cracks, glimmering before vanishing into air.
That night, he dreamed.
He stood on an endless field of black petals under a moon made of roots. From the horizon, Gia's face formed — immense, beautiful, sorrowful. Her voice wrapped around him like warmth.
"Jace," she whispered. "Your brother has chosen to protect those who destroyed us. He sees love as salvation. But love built the noose around my neck."
The world shuddered with her grief.
He fell to his knees as vines crawled up around him, not in malice this time, but embrace.
"You are my judgment," she said. "Not because you hate, but because you understand pain. You will cleanse this garden. You will teach them obedience."
As she spoke, the mark on his wrist ignited, green fire burning beneath the skin. The pain was unbearable—but so was the ecstasy of power. He screamed until the air fractured, until his veins turned silver and his eyes refracted light like shattered glass.
When he woke, the mark was gone.
In its place, roots had grown beneath his skin, branching out toward his fingertips.
He flexed his hand, and the world around him bent just slightly—air thickening, vines twitching in response to his emotion.
Seraphiel entered, watching him with quiet pride.
"And thus, the Bloom remembers its heir."
Jace met her gaze, a strange calm settling over him.
"Then I'm ready for my brother."
Somewhere far above the roots of Eden's Vein, the earth trembled. Silver auroras widened across the horizon — the echoes of vessels awakening in distant lands.
Mother Nature's voice whispered across every leaf in the hidden garden.
"Two sons of one seed. Only one may bloom."