Location: Crimson Petal Dominion – The Bone Gardens, Planet 10 (Solmerea)
Time: [Drift Residue Thick – Glyph Interference 42%]
The Bone Gardens were, in a word, gorgeous.
In another word?
Haunting.
The landscape stretched out like a graveyard built by artists with trauma. Every surface was white — not snow, but polished bone. The trees? Petrified ivory and silver veined with bloodstone, their roots curling upward instead of down, like they were trying to climb back into the sky.
The flowers didn't bloom in sunlight.
They bloomed in echoes — soft pulses of memory that shimmered like heatwaves, triggered by drifting footsteps.
And the petals?
Weren't petals.
They were fragments of names.
Inscribed on thin, fluttering parchment-thin bones, swaying gently in the warm red mist.
A soft wind passed through them.
They whispered.
Not in words.
In guilt.
REN (whispering):
"This place is either going to give me a spiritual revelation… or an aneurysm."
SNARKSTEEL (dead serious):
"Ten coin says both."
FROST (awed but uneasy):
"It's like walking through the afterlife's art exhibit."
BLAZE:
"Everything's glowing and pretty and absolutely screaming at my instincts to burn it to the ground."
TIME (mock-swooning):
"Honestly, I love it. Very 'haunted noble trauma chic.' Perfect place to die dramatically."
The path ahead wasn't carved.
It invited.
Each step Ren took was answered by the bone-laced flora reacting — lighting up with faint glyphs, like they remembered who he was before he did.
REN (to himself):
"They're not just bones…
They're graves.
Alive ones."
He reached out and touched one of the larger twisted tree-structures — a spiral of femur-branches with jawbone leaves, all carefully carved into ritual sigils.
The moment his finger made contact—
FLASH.
A memory that wasn't his jolted through his mind:
—a woman, dressed in Crimson robes, whispering names into a hollow skull.
—a scream beneath the ground.
—a child born from ash who could speak to glyphs without casting them.
Ren yanked his hand back.
REN:
"They're recording glyphs."
LIRA (over comm-link, distorted by mist):
"Be careful. The Bone Gardens are sacred to the Dominion. They embed their bloodlines directly into the soil. Each tree is a living ancestor."
REN (gritting his teeth):
"Of course it is. Can't just grow carrots like normal tyrants—nooo, we've got to make haunted vegetables."
SPACE:
"Correction. These are soul-rooted bone-trees, not vegetables.
Please don't insult them.
They're listening."
Suddenly, all around them, the petals fluttered.
The bones hummed like tuning forks.
And the path ahead lit up — glowing bone runes forming a trail.
FROST (hushed):
"...They're guiding us."
SNARKSTEEL:
"Or luring us in to digest our trauma. Either way, let's go. I'm bored."
AETHERIUM CORE:
> MEMORY NODE DETECTED > ID: "SERAVAL THE NAMELESS" > STATUS: FORGOTTEN LINEAGE – UNKNOWN > POTENTIAL FRAGMENT LINK: 34%
REN (raising his blade):
"Alright.
Let's meet the ghosts.
Just remind me not to touch any skulls that whisper back."