Information slipped into Ian's mind. The leaf wasn't just ceremonial. It was a communication and data link, keyed directly to him.
It could remain as it was or bind to his skin as a faint, shifting mark, often seen along the wrist or collarbone. Once linked, it responded to thought alone. With a moment of focus, he could call up displays, transmit or receive messages, or access the Concord's broader systems.
Unlike the local comms he was familiar with, this one wasn't limited to a region or planet. Its reach spanned the entire dominion of the Irylian Concord, nearly a quarter of the known universe.
Ian drifted into thought. How would this even work?
Any form of instantaneous communication needed a channel, some sort of medium to carry the signal. Conventional methods, like electromagnetic waves, were limited by distance, interference, and the fundamental barrier of light speed. There was no way something like this could reach across thousands of galaxies using normal means.
The Zephar petal ring on his finger stirred. Its metal unraveled, blooming silently into a flower that hovered just above the leaf. It moved with quiet curiosity, brushing the edges of the strange artifact, as if examining it, reading it.
Ian asked softly, "What are you doing?"
Zephar Petals didn't respond right away, still hovering and brushing against the leaf like an old scholar feeling out a rare page… or, from Ian's perspective, like an overly curious pervert.
Then it finally sent a thought across, slow and thoughtful."This seems… delicious."
Ian blinked and quickly pulled the leaf away. "It's not for you to eat."
The petals lingered in the air for a second, giving off the impression of an offended flutter. "I wasn't actually going to eat it."
"Do you know what it is, then?"
There was a pause. "Figure it out yourself."
Ian replied with a faintly amused tone. "Is that how you talk to your parent?"
"Then shouldn't you feed me properly?" it replied, its voice soft but a little pointed.
Ian blinked. That… was technically fair. He had asked a few times, if it wanted anything. But Zephar Petals never showed interest. And what did a sentient flower even eat, anyway? Stardust? Dew off moon-grown moss? After a while, he'd stopped asking.
And Zephar Petals, well, it wasn't upset because it needed something. It was the gesture. A simple check-in, every now and then. A quiet, "do you need anything?" That had stopped, too.
The flower gave a small humph and drifted down, settling gently back onto his hand. With a small shimmer, it turned back into a ring.
Ian sighed. "Alright… we'll go tomorrow. Buy something just for you."
No reply.
He glanced at the ring. Still quiet.
Ian just shook his head with a smile. Zephar Petals hadn't changed much on the outside, but clearly, it was entering its needy toddler phase.
Ian turned his attention back to the leaf. He reached inward, gently calling on the Mindbloom.
At first, it responded with its usual faint echo, but then, something shifted. A thread revealed itself, a connection, almost biological, woven through the fabric of space and time itself. Ian focused, letting the Mindbloom unfold further. It obeyed easily, more sensitive than usual, sharper, stronger. He had changed, after all. The First Order came with its own silent evolutions.
He pressed deeper, directing the Mindbloom to trace the thread, follow it wherever it led. His mind steadied, sharpened. A pulse ran through his body as the Mindbloom synchronized with him completely, and then the vision came.
A tree. Enormous, mythic, its size beyond anything measurable. Its roots disappeared into swirling void, and its trunk stretched into eternity, bark covered in fractal markings that pulsed like they were alive. The branches were vast and elegant, threading through the darkness of space like veins of thought, spanning galaxies and beyond.
And the leaves, they came in every color the universe had ever known, and a few it hadn't. Some flickered like flame, others glowed from within, or shimmered like liquid crystal. They danced in a slow, impossible rhythm, not touched by wind but by something older, something like memory.
At the crown of the tree, something immense slumbered.
A serpent, vast beyond comprehension, was coiled through the trunk, its body looping around the tree like a celestial wreath. Its scales shimmered with shifting constellations, starlight etched into every curve of its form. Each breath moved slowly, deeply, as though it dreamed in millennia. Its head rested across a thick branch, eyes closed, breath deep and steady, as though lost in dreams older than entire civilizations.
Somewhere in the distance, the leaf he held flickered in resonance.
Outside his body, the symbols of the Mindbloom unfurled across his eyes, spiraling, glowing softly.
Then, pain.
A sharp, sudden stab behind his skull. His breath caught, the vision cracked.
He stumbled back, clutching his face, warmth trailing from the corners of his eyes. Blood. Not much, but enough to sting. His heartbeat thundered.
Ian exhaled sharply, bracing himself. What was that...?
He'd never seen, or even imagined, anything like it. A being so vast it felt like the universe itself had shifted just to accommodate its presence. The sheer scale of it should've terrified him.
And, for a moment, it did. That primal fear, instinctive and sharp, tried to claw its way up.
But then the Mindbloom responded.
A quiet pulse spread through his mind, like a hand on the shoulder, calm, steady, anchoring. Not his own breath, but something deeper, connected to him. It grounded him.
The panic ebbed, and in its place came something else.
Awe.
That such beings existed... that they could be touched, even for a second, was terrifying, yes, but also thrilling. Somewhere in that vast cosmic order, he'd made a ripple. Maybe it was foolish, but a part of him believed that one day, he might reach that level too.
Not now. Not even close.
But one day.
He rubbed the blood from his eyes, carefully tucking the leaf back into his storage bracelet. The Mindbloom had grown stronger, more refined, more attuned, but clearly, there were lines even it wasn't meant to cross. He'd need to be more careful. He was still learning.
The door creaked open.
Myrra stepped inside, pausing as her eyes landed on him. She smiled at first, but then her expression shifted.
"Your eyes," she said softly. "Are you alright?"
Ian blinked, wiping at the corners again. "Yeah. I'm fine now."
She didn't ask anything else. Just crossed the room quietly and wrapped her arms around him, guiding his head gently to her chest. Her voice was a whisper against his hair.
"As long as you're okay."
He let out a slow breath, the tension easing in her warmth. After a few seconds, she pulled back, her hand lingering at his cheek for a moment.
"Come on. Dinner's ready."
He nodded and followed her out.
But unbeknownst to Ian, in a realm far beyond the veil of common awareness, the great tree stirred.
Its branches, vast and interwoven like cosmic rivers, shivered. Leaves of every imaginable hue rustled soundlessly, their edges shimmering with threads of energy. Somewhere deep within its colossal form, something pulsed. A whisper rippled outward, not sound, not light, but a presence that brushed against reality.
Across the Irylian Concord, it was felt.
A collective stillness.
Beings of power paused mid-thought. Ancients awoke from meditation. Engines slowed, sensors twitched, stars flickered with a moment of indecision. None could say what it was. Only that something had moved.
Atop the highest reaches of the tree, draped like a divine ornament across its upper canopy, lay a serpent.
Vast beyond comprehension.
Its immense body coiled languidly around the ancient trunk, loops winding across branches thick as towers. Each scale shimmered with drifting constellations, stars that slid and twisted over its length, as if time itself flowed across its skin. It didn't stir. Didn't even seem to breathe.
Until now.
The voice of the tree broke the stillness."This presence… it feels familiar. Echoes of ******."
The serpent's eye opened, slowly. A single gleaming orb, vast and bottomless, lit with galaxies and void. It didn't speak right away. Only watched. Thought. Then, low and heavy: "Has he returned?"
The tree replied, its voice layered with age and uncertainty. "I can't say. Perhaps… another inheritor."
The serpent shifted slightly, enough to make entire star systems blink in its shadow. "But that shouldn't be possible."
The tree's branches rustled again. "Either way… I should let her know."
The serpent blinked once, slow and deliberate. "Isn't she still in the middle of *******?"
"She is," the tree murmured. "But some of her fragments are still active. I'll inform one."
The serpent gave no answer for a long moment. Then its eye closed once more. "As you desire.."
And all was still again, though the stars themselves seemed slower to breathe.
In some vast, distant place, far beyond stars and space and even thought itself, there lay a chamber that resembled a library, if the term hadn't felt far too small.
Towering shelves spiraled upward like pillars of a forgotten cathedral, vanishing into clouds of soft golden mist above. Some were carved from crystal, others from bark and bone, metal and stone. Books, countless books, lined the shelves, stacked in impossible formations, orbiting quietly through the air, or whispering among themselves with the rustle of aged parchment.
Tomes were everywhere. Some stacked neatly, preserved in stasis fields or held shut by whispering chains. Others floated loosely, lazily orbiting glowing lanterns or drifting like leaves through the musty air. Scrolls rolled themselves and unrolled again. A leather-bound book flapped by like a bird, muttering to itself. One shelf was entirely inhabited by small, horned creatures made of folded paper, quietly debating the difference between dreams and memory.
And through it all… a soft hum. Faint and melodic, like someone humming to themselves while wandering through eternity. Not loud, not eerie. Just... there. Timeless.
The sound curled through the vaulted air like dust in sunlight, weaving through stacks and spells and things that had long forgotten their names.
There, sprawled comfortably on her stomach across the floor, legs lazily swaying in rhythm with the tune, was a woman.
She looked human, in the way a poem looks like a sentence, technically true, but somehow too much. Too vivid. Her beauty was the kind that made the air feel thinner, like creation itself had paused a moment too long on her design. Skin warm and flushed with life, features sculpted yet soft, a kind of elegance that didn't try. Her clothes were an unapologetic mess, loose sleeves half-rolled, fabric scorched in places by ink or alchemical burns, the collar of her coat folded unevenly. It didn't matter. None of it dulled her, if anything, it made her more disarming.
Her dark hair was tied up in a haphazard bun, though one thick strand slipped free, falling in front of her nose as she scribbled furiously into a massive, ancient tome beneath her. Her foot tapped the air absently, the hum never stopping
But even in this strange, sprawling place, her eyes felt… out of place.. Their color wasn't fixed, but fluid. At a glance, they looked a pale silver-blue, almost translucent like glass catching moonlight. But the longer you looked, the more you saw, ribbons of dusk-purple threading through the irises, sparks of deep ember-gold that flared and faded as if responding to thoughts not yet spoken.
They shimmered like liquid memory. Not glowing, not unnatural, just aware. There was no single color to them, only layers, like a thousand sunsets and storms caught behind a quiet gaze. And beneath all of it, something deeper, a gentle, impossible depth, as if the blueprints of the universe had folded themselves into the shape of her stare.
Beautiful? Unquestionably. But not in any way the world knew. This was the kind of beauty you didn't fall for, you just stood still before it, the way one stands before lightning or the first breath of a world being born.
Suddenly, she stopped humming. Her pen froze mid-stroke. As if she'd heard something.
Slowly, she sat upright, folding her legs beneath her in a posture that made no anatomical sense but felt deliberate, precise. Her gaze turned downward, no, through, as if looking across dimensions, across time.
And in that moment, the boundaries of space unraveled.
What she saw wasn't this place, but another entirely. A quiet room. A warm meal. Ian, sitting across from Myrra, eating and enjoying the food she had created for him. With a single glance, she understood everything. Ian's past, the fractured paths behind him, the origin threads that stitched his presence together. And more than that, she found the thread that connected him to her. Faint, nearly lost, but unmistakably there.
She smiled.
And that smile was enough to make the ancient tomes rustle, to send tremors through the glyphs burned into the walls. It bloomed like a star being born: radiant, enigmatic, a touch mischievous. The kind of smile that belonged to someone who knew how everything would end, but still delighted in the act of watching it unfold.
She tilted her head, eyes still distant, and murmured to herself, barely audible over the hum of eternity:
"Is this your choice…?"
And then, silence again, like the world had exhaled.