(Year 0 of the Petal Era)
They called it a miracle at first.
When the skies cracked open and showers of glowing petals rained upon the Earth, humanity rejoiced. The flowers that sprouted overnight cured illness, purified air, and brought light to the darkest cities. The Fairies emerged soon after. Radiant beings of impossible beauty, whispering in voices like wind-chimes and singing in forgotten tongues. They offered no words, only blessings.
But within seven days, it began.
The petals turned red.
The trees moved where they weren't planted.
And the Fairies began to scream.
Cities were consumed in blooming jungles of thorns and spores. The sick were reborn as husks filled with roots. Children vanished, only to return with eyes that bloomed like flowers and voices that weren't their own. The Fairies changed, twisting into grotesque versions of themselves. Limbs like vines, wings made of bone, faces hollow and floral.
They did not kill out of hatred.
They did not speak.
They simply erased as if mankind was a mistake in their perfect world.
The event was named "The First Blooming."
The day Earth became a garden.
A garden that devoured its gardeners
(Year 153 of the Petal Era)
In the shattered bones of what was once Tokyo, where ivy-choked towers bent like kneeling gods and blood-red petals drifted through poisoned air, only the dead moved freely.
The living?
They learned to hide.
And few hid better than Ren Itsuki.
Sixteen winters old, yet his eyes carried the weight of a dying century. Gray and glassy, like smoke that no longer remembered the fire it came from. Once, he was a boy with parents, a home, dreams.
Dust motes danced in slanted shafts of light through shattered windows. Ren stalked the aisles of toppled shelves, brushing aside rotted tomes until a scrap of parchment caught his eye.
"…Cathedral of Thorns. Heartbeat heard beneath the altar…"
He pressed a fingertip to the faded ink. A legend, yes, but every legend is born from truth.
A soft cough made him spin.
An old scribe, half-mad, all curiosity peered over broken spectacles.
"Looking for myths, boy?" she rasped.
Ren shrugged. "Stories keep me fed."
She snorted. "This one might feed you forever… or never at all."
With trembling hands, he slid him a hand-drawn map: a faded cross atop a cathedral ruin.
"Find it," she whispered, "but be warned: what sleeps there doesn't like company."
Ren pocketed the map, silence his answer, and melted back into the aisles, heart ticking like a clock.
A collapsed greenhouse on the city's edge
The wind moaned through the shattered ribs of the old greenhouse, carrying the scent of wilted moss and rotting iron. Vines coiled through broken windows like fingers. Outside, the world was silent.
Inside, an old woman sat hunched beside a shattered planting table, her breath rattling like dry leaves. She wore six coats layered over one another, all patched with mismatched thread. A faint pink glow pulsed beneath the wooden floorboards. Fairy roots below. Dangerous. Close.
But she didn't move. She waited.
Then came the sound: soft, deliberate footsteps against glass.
The boy stepped through the ruins, hood up, face shadowed, boots crunching over petals that had long dried to ash. A small, rag-wrapped bundle dangled from his hand.
Ren Itsuki.
He didn't greet her.
She didn't flinch.
Instead, she coughed. Wet. Deep. And gave a toothless grin. "Late," she rasped. "I thought you'd died. Again."
Ren dropped the bundle onto the table. "You always say that."
She leaned forward, fingers trembling as she opened the cloth. Inside, a few shriveled bulbs, wild onions, barely edible, but real. Dirt still clung to them like precious armor.
"My little miracle," she whispered, holding one like it was gold. "You risk your life for these, you know."
"I didn't risk it for you," Ren muttered, eyes scanning the windows. "There were no Blossomed near the canals today. I moved fast."
The woman chuckled dryly. "You never do anything without reason. So what's your payment this time? A memory from the before times? Filtered water?"
Ren was silent for a moment.
Then: "A name."
She blinked. "A name?"
"You've lived longer than anyone. I want the name of the blade buried under the cathedral. The one they whisper about." His eyes were sharp now. Focused. "Tell me if it's real."
The old woman stared at him, her smile slowly fading.
"…So you found it."
Silence stretched like roots underground.
Ren didn't nod. He didn't blink.
The woman sat back, breath slow. "They called it Shinkazura. It was forged just before the ending of the first blossom. The Shinkazaura held the power to cut down anything in it's path. The creator of the ancient blade considered the vast possibilities. He placed a curse upon the blade to instant kill anyone who dared to grab it.
She looked at him, really looked and saw the weight in his eyes.
"You touched it, didn't you?"
"No." He corrected. "Some old bag gave me a map."
Her eyes widened. "I suppose you want to find it then."
He looked away.
"Ren." She said a tone so concrete it could move the soul.
"This a dangerous task. If the blossomed- No worse. If the Fairies find you then-"
The old woman's voice cracked, but not from age. From fear.
Ren didn't respond. He stared at the floor, where a single crack had split through the roots, letting in the barest sliver of moonlight.
"That blade is no tool. It's a will. A hunger. It doesn't care who holds it. Only that it's used."
She gripped the edge of the table with fingers like gnarled roots. "The last one to find Shinkazura tried to kill the all powerful Fairy King! His name was lost. His bones still glow in the deep."
Ren remained still. His silence wasn't disrespect. It was calculation. He was always measuring the distance between myth and truth.
"Why now?" she asked. "Why you?"
He finally turned to face her, shadows parting from his face like torn cloth. His eyes were sharp, but not cruel. Tired. Cold. Focused. "No one else will free the world from this."
A gust of wind rattled the glass above. Somewhere in the distance, a shriek echoed—high, inhuman, like laughter twisted into blades.
Ren stepped back from the table and pulled his hood up.
The woman clutched the bundle of onions to her chest like a child. "Then listen well," she said, voice low. "The blade is aware, the curse is a test to see if you will fulfill the task. If you fail it will curse you with a fate worse than death."
"I'll accept it." Ren said flatly. "The world will never change if no one at least tries."
He turned and stepped into the ruins again. Glass cracked underfoot. The light was dying.
The woman, Shion, sat alone once more.
She stared down at the bulbs in her lap, then at the roots twitching just beneath the floorboards. They pulsed faster now. As if the earth itself had heard him speak the blade's name.
"Shinkazura," she muttered, as if tasting ash. "That sword always calls the quiet ones first."
She looked toward the door and whispered, almost to herself,
"May the gods forgive you, boy. Or for the better… may they forget you."
Petal Era, Year 153 — The Cathedral of Thorns
The cathedral stood like a broken god.
Its spires had long since caved in, swallowed by vines as thick as tree trunks. Moss spilled down its walls in thick curtains, and the stained glass had melted under time and heat, leaving jagged kaleidoscopes of color frozen in pain.
Ren climbed the fractured steps slowly, hand on the hilt of his dagger, not the sword he didn't yet carry.
Inside, the cathedral was silent.
Not peaceful. Hollow.
The once-grand hall stretched before him, ceiling open to the gray sky, rain seeping through the gaps in soft drips that echoed off marble. Statues had been torn apart by thorny roots that now coiled around them like snakes. The altar stood at the far end, split in half down the middle. Beneath it, the map claimed, was the crypt.
Ren knelt beside the broken altar, feeling the cold bite of stone under his gloves.
He reached down and pressed against the moss-covered slab.
It moved.
Grnnkkk
With effort, he pushed it aside, revealing a narrow staircase descending into complete black.
He lit a flare.
Orange glow kissed the walls as he stepped down, every bootstep slow, measured. His breath clouded in the cold air.
He didn't know how long the stairs went on. Time stretched. Thoughts sharpened.
Then, finally
The crypt opened.
A massive chamber lay hidden beneath the cathedral. Roots curled along the ceiling like veins. Faint pinkish glow pulsed from the walls. Petals drifted from above as if gravity had forgotten them.
And there, at the chamber's center, was the sword.
Shinkazura.
It stood embedded in a great stone, just as the legends had said, vines half-wrapped around its black hilt, as if trying to pull it deeper into the earth. The blade pulsed faintly, crimson veins glowing beneath its surface. It sang without sound.
Ren stepped forward.
And stopped.
Because the roots beneath the blade shifted.
Not with wind.
Not with breath.
With life.
The roots split like skin, and something vast stirred below.
From the soil rose a Blossomed Titan, its head scraping the ceiling. It was not human. It was the husk of a long-dead one, reanimated by parasitic flora that bloomed from its skull and chest. Its ribs were hollow, and the vines curled in and out of them like intestines. Its arms dragged long behind it, ending in thorn-bladed claws. One of its eyes remained milky and unmoving. The other had been overtaken by a glowing pink flower the size of a man's chest.
It did not roar.
It breathed.
A breath that shook the walls and turned the air bitter.
Ren crouched behind a root pillar, heart hammering in his chest. He watched the creature. Watched how it swayed slowly, as if still half-asleep.
The blade was only twenty paces away.
But each step would rattle the roots beneath him.
Ren clenched his fists.
He had come all this way. Scavenged through the years. Dodged patrols of scouting fairies. Crossed the ruined canals on rusted chains.
This was the moment.
He looked to the blade again.
And the monster's massive flower-eye slowly turned.
Straight toward him.
Petals peeled back from its mouth. It grinned.
Ren's determination flickered as he held his dagger tightly.
And then the ground exploded.
The Titan charged.
Ren ran.
The world blurred.
He darted left, and the Titan smashed into the pillars where he had been, sending chunks of root and soil flying.
Ren skidded behind the nearest pillar. He panted, heart thundering. The Titan roared.
The whole room shuddered.
He peeked around the pillar.
And his eyes went wide.
The Titan was charging again.
Straight toward him.
He didn't have time to think.
Ren leapt forward and ran toward the ancient blade.
With one deep breath he gripped it with his right hand.
It burned.
Shinkazura pulsed in his hands.
He didn't hear the hissing of the blade.
All he heard was his heartbeat.
And the sound of the Titan.
The creature charged toward him, its massive thorn-claws raised high.
Ren gripped the sword, teeth gritted.
And he swung.
The sword moved like wind.
It cut straight through the creature, splitting it down the middle.
Roots and vines erupted like blood.
Ren skidded, and the Titan fell.
It suddenly erupted in blue flames.
Ren sighs. Shinkazura shrinks just enough to fit in his palm. He looks at it for a moment, then slides it into his belt.
"Time to go home."