Chapter 8: The Garden of Screams
The Crown fragment pulsed faintly in Leo's hand, an echo of pain and grief stitched into its jagged edges. He wrapped it in cloth and placed it in the fragment satchel hanging over his chest. Three pieces now. Each heavier than the last. Not in weight — but in memory.
Fang sat curled near the throne, ears twitching even in sleep. Coal, half-coiled around the crumbling courtyard, rested like a mountain content after eruption. Leo stood between them and watched the first dawn rise over the Hollow Court in centuries.
The sky, once sickly red, was now streaked with pale blues and violets. Birds chirped. Real birds.
"Guess we broke the curse," Leo muttered.
Not quite.
A whisper scratched the inside of his skull, just beneath conscious thought.
"You woke something old…"
He turned sharply, eyes scanning the ruins, but the voice was gone. Like an aftertaste of blood on steel.
They left that morning.
With Coal flying low over the ash dunes, they made swift progress southward, toward the Wraithshade Expanse — the haunted jungle that held the fourth fragment. The map, barely decipherable, showed it as a sprawling green blot known only by the name "The Garden of Screams."
It was said no beast tamer had entered it and returned.
Leo intended to rewrite that.
Two Days Later
The jungle was alive — but not in any way nature intended.
Flesh bloomed where flowers should. Vines pulsed like veins. Trees twisted into one another, their bark writhing with tiny mouths. Even the air had weight — thick with musk and whispers.
Leo, Fang, and Coal stood at the jungle's edge. A single stone monolith jutted from the ground, covered in hundreds of small, engraved names.
At the bottom: "To all who fed the Garden."
Fang whispered, "This place is wrong."
Leo nodded. "Stay close."
They stepped inside.
The change was instant.
Light died.
Sound stretched.
Even Fang's growl came out wrong — distorted, slow.
Leo blinked. The shadows were moving — not the leaves. The shadows. They slithered independently of the trees, flickering toward him in spider-leg motions.
The jungle devoured time. One minute in — an hour gone. Two hours in — the map warped itself, reshaping the jungle constantly.
[Zone Effect: Eldertangle Madness – Fragmented Time & Memory Distortions Active][Resist: 84% due to Bonded Crown Fragments]
They reached the heart of the jungle by twilight of an unknown day.
At its center lay a grove — open, circular, choked in glowing vines and carnivorous blossoms. A ring of ancient statues stood silently around a blood-red pool.
And above it all, impaled upon a trunk-like spire of twisted bark, was a creature too large to be bird, too rooted to be beast.
It pulsed — its body a chrysalis of torn flesh and petals.
From its chest grew a Crown Fragment, encased in glassy bloom.
[Fragment Detected: 4/7 – "The Blooming Fang"][Warning: Guardian Presence Detected – Classification: Primal Aberration][Name: Yulatha, the Screaming Rootmother]
Something screamed.
Not in Leo's ears — in his teeth, in his bones, in the roots of his mind.
The trees bent inward. The sky flickered between colors never meant for mortal vision. The ground split as the Rootmother uncoiled, rising on too many legs, her body shedding husks of spore-infested flesh.
She screamed again — a sound like birth and death at once.
Coal reared up, roaring to drown it out. Fang bared his fangs, glowing with energy.
Leo gritted his teeth. "We kill it. Fast."
The battle began in chaos.
Yulatha's tendrils struck like spears, each tipped in neurotoxin. Fang darted between them, clawing at exposed stalks and slicing sap-veins. Coal ignited the battlefield, his flames searing the edges of the Grove — but the Rootmother grew faster.
Every wound became fertilizer. Every flame bred spores.
Leo activated Beast Merge – Soul Thread.
[Ability Activated: Soul Merge – Leo + Fang][Effect: Enhanced Speed, Reflex, Shared Vision. Duration: 3 Minutes]
He moved like lightning.
He was lightning.
He and Fang danced between lashes, claws and sword carving a path through the roots.
Coal struck from above, smashing the tree-spine in half. Yulatha screeched and burst upward — revealing a glowing core beneath her chest.
Leo saw it.
"THERE!"
He flung the Obsidian Heart like a spear. It sank into the core.
Yulatha shrieked.
And then, from every tree in the grove — screams.
Thousands.
Tens of thousands.
Leo dropped to one knee, blood coming from his ears.
"Free us…"
"Take it…"
"End the garden…"
The Rootmother's body collapsed, rotting into vines.
The Crown Fragment fell, landing in the pool. The blood turned to water. Then to mist. Then to flowers.
White lilies.
Dozens of them.
Fang stepped forward, ears back. He picked up the fragment with his teeth and brought it to Leo.
[Crown Fragment Acquired: 4/7 – The Blooming Fang][New Ability: Verdant Pulse – Heal all bonded beasts over time (Cooldown: 3 days)]
But something else bloomed in Leo's mind — a memory not his own.
A child.
Kneeling before a Crown.
Begging it to bring her family back.
Then screaming as roots tore through her skin.
He gasped, dropping the fragment.
Fang caught it.
Leo shook his head. "They're not just relics. They're… graves."
Fang nodded grimly. "And you're wearing them."
Leo looked down at his satchel, the weight of four fragments pressing on his chest like guilt.
"Three more," he said.
"And then what?" Fang asked.
Leo stared into the sky.
"I don't know."
Elsewhere...
The citadel of glass now shimmered with movement.
Six figures stood before a seventh throne — empty.
The woman with silver tattoos spoke.
"The Bloom has fallen."
A man with skin like obsidian clenched his fists.
"Then it's time."
"Release the Cindervoid Twins."
They bowed to the empty throne.
And in the darkness beyond time, something began to wake.