No flower of that species had ever been recorded in such a shade of violet. It was a rarity that the girl believed would serve as the perfect gift for him.
He accepted it, cherishing it as the final token he possessed of her. Something to hold onto before she slipped beyond the reach of his control.
In his laboratory, he nurtured it in a simple pot while he pursued the great work of his life.
Through every experiment, every sleepless night, the flower endured. It drank in the light that shimmered from his instruments, light that mirrored the man's own shifting intentions, and the other set of lights he so often manipulated.
That second set of light came from the signatures he endlessly rearranged. Patterns of radiance the extranologist tampered with until they fractured in his hands.
Some signatures were jagged and unyielding. Others spread wide and pliant. A few swelled far beyond their original form.
Yet in one regard, they were identical. They all appeared deceptively palatable.
He sought to fashion a memento from them, but each attempt collapsed as the light within the signatures extinguished at the slightest miscalculation.
Still, something did change over time. The flower's roots began to sink.
Not into the soil, nor the pot, nor even the floor beneath, but into something deeper, something hidden beneath the world's veneer.
With every failure, the roots burrowed further into the unknown, though the man remained oblivious.
Until one day, the madman came closer than ever before.
Rather than layering the signatures as he had countless times, he chose to break them entirely.
He shattered them, then began reassembling the fragments into a single unified form. But as he worked, their light dimmed, thread by thread.
Unfazed, he pressed on. He was close. The memento was nearly whole. The gateway to what lay below was almost within reach.
Then an explosion outside tore it all apart.
Someone had deliberately intervened, and everything he had built collapsed in an instant.
A rift split the world, turning everything inside out.
The man himself was consumed by the rupture, a consequence of a flaw he had never accounted for.
He had committed countless transgressions in his pursuit, and the powerful humans whose purpose was to prevent such calamity destroyed his work without hesitation.
As for the innocent flower, its fate was far stranger.
It too was consumed, but not as the man had been.
Its substance dissolved, yet it grew, an impossibility that defied every law of creation.
It ceased to be a mere plant and became something wholly other.
Something that could only be described as 'Evil' incarnate.
In the higher quadrant of the Conmundia, along the wandering boundary of Pierre, a renowned psychologist once claimed that "evil" is simply life's response to dire straits. When an existence can no longer bear its burdens, it collapses into cruelty.
In the middle quadrant, from one of the formical boundaries, a philosopher argued that evil is the primordial nature of all things. What is called evil, he said, is merely the instinct of organisms to prioritize themselves. In that sense, evil is simply the will to outcompete.
Yet in the CBC, a scientist once proposed that evil might possess a form.
Lacking evidence, he seemingly reversed the idea, perhaps evil was not a substance at all, but the absence of one.
Since no 'Root' marked by the essence of wickedness had ever been found, he reasoned that evil was foreign to the pillars of creation—an emptiness, in other words.
But such a notion was dismissed as childish.
Who would believe that evil could be attributed to something so outlandish?
To the world at large, evil had tangible explanations, each act traceable to a cause. The scientist was mocked endlessly, and his theory–which would later be noted as a plausible explanation for what happened to the flower–was mostly forgotten.
When the flower transformed, it did not become a creature of substance, but a void given shape.
It, along with several other shadow-born beasts, manifested in place of the man once known as Lumine Vèn Helsberge.
This was how the Spires first emerged. And naturally, their first instinct as shadowbeasts was to annihilate every living thing they perceived.
Countless lives across the CBC were erased before any force could halt them.
Every life within reach of the Spires was snuffed out, and though powerful humans, those who shone with the same palatable lights, rose to oppose them, only a rare few could stand in the way.
The plant was no exception to the carnage. Yet its instinct was not merely to kill. It was to spread, to grow, to claim space.
No life could remain in its path. That was the root of its disdain for the beings it extinguished.
There were too many of them. Their influence sprawled too far, their presence swelled too large.
To the spire, they deserved to be culled, for they would one day encroach upon what it sought to become.
It rampaged without end until a red‑haired man confronted it without fear.
It was not a creature meant to feel pain, yet the flames he wielded seared it with agony.
They burned not only its form, but its very essence.
Overwhelmed, it fled.
Desperate to extinguish the torment, it searched for relief, but nothing soothed it until its roots brushed against a familiar comfort.
It chased that sensation and allowed itself to sink, beneath the surface, beneath the world, into the endless, motionless ocean.
This ocean lay beneath all things. Yet it was also all things.
It was more than the spire could comprehend, so it perceived only its own reflection upon the stillness.
Even that was too vast, too unbearable.
So it left the ocean and drifted into a perfect world, one brimming with life, ripe for the comfort it craved.
There it remained for ages.
Feeding, growing, and overruling the world until it bent to its will.
It lived by its urges.
No life must exist beyond its seeds. No space must lie beyond its reach.
So it continued until she appeared.
The violet‑eyed calamity who would overturn its dominion for better or worse.
When she arrived, her eyes held no purpose beyond destruction.
And the spire could do nothing as she reduced its world to ruin, as effortlessly as snapping a finger.
She was a slave to annihilation.
There was no malice in her, no grand design.
The end was embedded in the act.
At last, what it had feared came to pass.
A human would be the one to shatter its tranquil reign.
Yet it felt no anger.
Instead, it was drawn to her.
Something in her presence pulled its true being closer, even at the risk of utter annihilation, simply to be seen.
And when it approached near enough to be destroyed, it spoke.
It asked her what she desired.
The woman, who had shown nothing but emptiness, hesitated.
Her expression betrayed her confusion.
Halting her destruction was rare. Speaking was rarer still.
"Nothing," she said at last.
It heard her. Then it asked another question.
What did she want most?
That question was too heavy for her to answer.
But it did not matter.
It wished to fulfill it regardless.
For her light was unlike any it had ever witnessed.
A magnificent radiance that scarred all it touched, yet could no longer grow.
Such a light would be filling, but never delectable.
It wondered
If that light could be rekindled, how different would it appear?
She told the spire of her death.
Of the light she had lost and could not reclaim.
Of the world, she could no longer bear.
It longed to help her reach the world as she described it, but the place she sought was far beyond reach.
No distance she walked would ever return her there.
It was a hopeless wish at first.
Then the way became clear.
It remembered the ocean below and revealed it to her.
Of course, it could not swim through towards her desired destination as it could only reach the world it had been through.
Meaning the only correct path would be through the reflections it had left behind. All it needed was for her to serve as its eyes.
Fortunately, there was nothing under the skies that held this woman back.
Nothing could be weighed against allowing herself to be devoured.
So she did, and together they reached back, touching the roots of its past while her gaze opened the firmaments bordering their path.
Eventually, they could go no farther.
They failed just short of their destination, and the spirit within her eyes dimmed.
They were left alone in that world once again, with nothing but her empty shell resting beside its own spirit.
A deep, seething frustration inevitably welled within. Their journey had been for nothing.
Yet when all seemed lost, a miracle approached them unbidden.
A reflection of hers had entered the world.
Bearing the same eyes that had carried them so far.
Bearing the same weight.
Surely, they believed, she could take them just a little farther.