I watch her go for exactly one breath.
Then I turn back to the monster.
It closes the distance with unnatural speed.
One moment it’s twenty yards away, walking with that terrible deliberate purpose. The next it’s on me—clawed hands reaching for my throat, flower-covered limbs moving faster than anything that broken should be able to move.
I get my sword up. Barely. The blade catches its arm and carves through transformed flesh that parts like wet cloth. Black ichor sprays across my face. The arm keeps coming, momentum unaffected, and I have to throw myself backward to avoid the claws that would have opened my chest.
The severed arm hits the ground. Flowers bloom from the wound instantly—crimson petals unfurling with impossible speed, their edges sharp enough to catch the firelight.
The arm keeps twitching. Keeps reaching for me.
The monster doesn’t slow. Just keeps coming, one-armed now but no less dangerous, its remaining hand already reforming the claws I avoided.
This is what the Abbot created in his basement. This is what Bloom transformation looks like when it’s allowed to run its full course. A body that regenerates damage faster than damage can be inflicted. A mind that has been erased, replaced with nothing but purpose.
Hunt. Kill. Destroy everything that threatens the cult.
The Abbot is dead. The cult is destroyed. But this thing doesn’t know that. This thing only knows what it was programmed to do.
And right now, it’s programmed to kill me.
I fight.
Not with strategy. Not with the efficient brutality of all my practice. There’s no time for efficiency when your opponent regenerates faster than you can wound it.
I fight with desperation. With fury. With the absolute refusal to die before I’ve seen this through.
My sword carves chunks from the monster’s torso—and flowers bloom in the wounds, making it more dangerous rather than less. I sever its other arm—and tendrils of flowering tissue reach from the stump, reforming fingers that end in thorns instead of nails.
I drive my blade through its chest—and the wound closes around the steel, trapping my sword in a cage of transformed flesh that I have to wrench free before the creature can pull me into its embrace.
The Bloom in my own blood responds to the creature’s presence.
I feel it surging—the infection I’ve carried since the Garden, the tendrils that thread beneath my skin. They pulse with recognition. With want. The Bloom in me wants to join with theBloom in it. Wants to merge, to transform, to become something like the monster I’m fighting.
The wanting is overwhelming. Every strike I land sends waves of sensation through my infected blood. Every moment the fight continues makes the urge to surrender stronger.
But I don’t stop. Can’t stop.
Behind me, survivors are escaping. Behind me, Arwen is watching. Behind me, everything we fought for depends on me winning this one last battle.
I keep fighting.
FIFTY-FOUR
ZRYNOK
The monster doesn’t feel pain.
I carve wounds that would kill any normal creature—that would kill me, if our positions were reversed—and it doesn’t slow. Doesn’t react. Just keeps coming, keeps regenerating, keeps trying to drag me into a twisted embrace that would mean transformation or death.
I’m bleeding from a dozen new wounds. The claws have found gaps in my armor, torn furrows in my flesh that burn with something worse than simple injury. Bloom essence, I realize. The thorns are injecting me with concentrated spores every time they connect.
The infection spreads faster with every scratch.
I can feel it climbing—past my arms, across my chest, reaching for my heart with terrible purpose. The tendrils beneath my skin are visible now, pulsing with crimson light that matches the flowers blooming from the monster’s body.
