Chapter 3 - The Tree

  Thomas stood in darkness again. For a brief moment, he thought he’d been cast back into Damnation, but this place was different. He could still feel it. Still think. The memories hadn’t slipped away. They clung to him like smoke, thick and suffocating. The silence stretched, heavier than before, until a familiar presence stirred beside him.

  Before he could speak, 1332’s voice whispered near his ear, soft but theatrical: “In the beginning, there was no life to be found within the universe.”

  “What is goi—” he began, but his thoughts were cut short as the void around them exploded with light—blinding, pure, and absolute.

  He ducked low, arms shielding his face, expecting the roar of divine power or a tidal wave of heat. But no sound came. No force struck him—only 1332’s voice, louder now, riding the cataclysmic light. “We do not know how or why, but the empty void of space birthed light. From the dark came illumination. From illumination came power. And within that power... the Creator was formed.”

  The blinding light collapsed inward, folding in on itself like a dying star until it hovered before them, pulsing like a sun trapped in the palm of a hand. Thomas lowered his arms, his eyes narrowed against the glow. Then, just as suddenly, the radiance blinked out, leaving behind something strange. Something impossible for his mind to resonate with.

  “A... tree?” he muttered. But the word felt hollow, inadequate for what stood before him.

  The thing resembled a tree, but only in the loosest sense. Its roots, if that’s what they were, drifted downward into nothing, tangled in a web that seemed to stretch beyond sight. Branches, thick and bare, reached upward like fingers clawing at the void. Every inch of it pulsed with a deep blue light, vibrant and alive, surging from the core outward in cascading waves. Millions of points within the tree glowed like something born of fireflies and Forget-Me-Nots, a color Thomas hadn’t seen since he was a boy, picking flowers for someone he used to love. Someone long dead.

  “The being before you is the Creator,” 1332 said, her voice reverent now. “Its power is forged from the two great forces of the universe: Chaos and Order. That balance, constant, shifting, is the source of all life. It connects every soul, every World, every breath ever drawn.”

  Thomas blinked slowly, trying to take it all in. “So this... glowing tree thing is God?”

  She answered without pause. “Yes. And no. 'God' is too simple a word. This entity is not a person. It is not male or female. It is not a being that listens to prayers or strikes down sinners. It is the living energy of the universe, given form. It is everything that was and everything that ever will be. The Creator AND the creation.”

  That didn’t help. If anything, it made things worse. Chaos, Order, living energy... it was all gibberish. Thomas scratched at his forehead, where 1332 had poked him, squinting at the glowing branches. “Right. Okay. Chaos and Order made a blue tree... and the blue tree makes people?” He shook his head. “Feels like something the Jones Brothers would’ve tried to sell me.”

  When Thomas imagined God, if he ever did, it was usually some massive, invisible old man in the clouds with thunder in one hand and hellfire in the other. Not... this. Not a luminous tree floating in a black abyss. And yet, something about the vision felt....truer than the stories he’d been fed. Maybe it was the silence. Or maybe it was the way the tree pulsed, like a heartbeat shared by everything that had ever lived.

  Still, he wasn’t buying all of it. Not yet. “In my experience,” he murmured, “it’s the good folks who catch God’s wrath. The wicked tend to die rich, fat, and smug.”

  He didn’t say anything out loud, but part of him still was thinking about the void. Damnation had been cruel, yes—but it had been quiet. Peaceful. Free of memory. If that was punishment, he could live with it. Eternal darkness didn’t seem so bad, especially when compared to what he’d seen on Earth. “A place without thoughts, without guilt? How is that not mercy?”

  He was lost in those musings when he realized 1332 was still speaking. He’d missed a chunk of her explanation...again. Something about philosophers, prophets, and how different worlds had named the Creator. She was in lecture mode, her words rolling past him like a sermon. He caught the tail end: “...translated as ‘The Tree of Creation,’ ‘Mother of Chaos and Order,’ or, most commonly... ‘The Mana Tree.’”

  That word stuck for some reason. “Mana? What is mana?” he asked, not meaning to speak out loud. The word tasted foreign and familiar all at once.

  She didn’t miss a beat. “A good question. For now, understand, Mana is the power you see glowing through the tree. It is the Creator’s lifeblood. The energy that forms every soul, every body, every thought.”

  Thomas gave a slow nod, though the explanation didn’t do much to ease the ache growing in his head. “‘Glowing blue stuff.’ Got it,” he muttered internally. “That clears everything right up.”

  1332 pressed on, her voice carrying the cadence of someone reciting a well-rehearsed speech. “Many names have been given to this being across time and space. But my people, those closest to it, we call it... One. Because that is what it is. All of us live within it. All of us are of it. It is the first... and, if balance holds, there will never be a last.”

  He wanted to argue. Or laugh. Or ask one of the hundred questions bouncing around his skull. But he kept quiet, studying her closely. Something about the way she clung to her lines—like a performer refusing to break script—told him she wasn’t as calm as she appeared.

  “She’s high-strung,” he thought. “Doesn’t like improvising. Either she expected me to be smarter than this... or she’s winging it harder than she wants to admit.”

  He watched her more carefully now, noting the tension she tried to hide beneath polished calm. “She’s definitely not used to being interrupted,” he mused. “Or ignored.” He remembered the flash of cold fury on her face back at the saloon—the split second where her mask had cracked. “Whatever she would’ve done to me if I pushed harder… I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be standing here.”

  Too late, he realized he’d drifted again. 1332 had stopped speaking. She was staring at him now, her expression unreadable, but her eyes were sharp. Cutting.

  He raised both hands in surrender, forcing an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I was… thinking deeply about what you just said. Please,” he gestured toward the glowing tree, “carry on.”

  She didn’t smile. Not even a twitch. But after a long beat, she turned back to the tree. “Watch closely, Mr. Delaney,” she said, her tone clipped and cold.

  Thomas's mind tensed. His body relaxed automatically, ready for something—anything. “Great,” he thought, “nothing like pissing off a literal angel with mind control hands.”

  1332’s voice remained calm, but it was the kind of calm that came before a storm. “Believe it or not, what you’re seeing is still distant. I wanted you to witness the moment of its birth first… but now, we’re going in for a closer look.” She turned her head slightly, offering a too-sweet smile. “You may feel like you’re flying, but I assure you, we’re not moving at all.”

  Then came the pull—sudden and sharp. The instant change of view was sickening. The entire scene lurched forward in his view like the world had been yanked beneath his feet. Thomas fell hard, landing on his backside as the colossal tree surged toward them, growing with terrifying speed.

  He’d thought it large before, maybe the size of a house, but now it was a mansion. Then, a hill. As the void peeled away, it just kept expanding, swallowing the horizon, blotting out everything. Soon, it was a mountain. No—a continent. He wasn’t flying anymore. He was falling into its depths and plummeting through an endless labyrinth toward something impossible.

  Blue lines stretched like massive roads through the sky, and the closer they drew, the more the illusion of a tree fractured. Its form unraveling into threads of light—rivers of sapphire weaving into an incomprehensible web. The trunk dissolved into a nexus, a braided center from which all things radiated.

  “Do you understand now, Mr. Delaney?” 1332 asked, her voice distant in his pounding ears, and over the rush of windless motion. “The vastness of our Creator? No? We’re not even close yet. But maybe soon… you’ll begin to grasp how small you truly are.”

  Thomas didn’t hear her tone, didn’t catch the edge of anger still lingering in her voice. He was too busy gripping nothing, struggling to ground himself against the overwhelming scale. His mind felt like it would fracture at any moment. The tree moved like it was alive, folding and stretching with every pulse of blue as they flew deeper. He pressed his hands flat against the unseen floor beneath him, desperate for something solid.

  After what felt like an eternity, their descent slowed, gradually shifting into a glide. The rivers of light beneath them thickened, widening into great sapphire oceans. Each pulse that flowed through them sent ripples of power across their surfaces, and Thomas watched with stunned awe as they shimmered like gemstone waves.

  His eyes watered with the terrible majesty of it all. His vision tunneled to a single point to try to keep him from breaking. The disorientation was so complete that he nearly lost consciousness with every unnecessary breath, but then something changed. A flicker caught his eye: a small light, floating within the nearest ocean, seeming to call out to him. At first, he thought it was a trick of the glowing power, but as he focused, he saw more of them. Dozens. Thousands. Tiny stars drifting inside the currents of power that seemed to cause small cyclones around themselves.

  “They’re beautiful,” he whispered. The words came unbidden, tumbling from his lips like prayer. “Like diamonds in a midnight sea…” He blinked through the haze. “What am I looking at, 1332?”

  She reached out and helped him to his feet. He swayed as she looked down on him, saying, “You already know what that nearest light is. That, Thomas… is your home. That is Earth.”

  He stared at her, confused, then turned back to the flickering light. As he stared, they slowly moved closer to the small diamond. Slowly, its oblong shape emerged—blue and green, swirled with white. “Earth?” he breathed. “Like as in the planet? That’s all of it? All of... us?” The revelation struck harder than he expected. His knees wobbled.

  The world he’d lived in, fought in, died in—reduced to a glimmer in an endless river of power. It should have felt majestic. It didn’t. It felt small. Insignificant. The thousands of other lights now register as different worlds in his mind. He couldn’t look away, even as his breath caught in his chest. “None of this... makes any damn sense.” His voice cracked. “I think I need a cigarette.”

  The nausea overwhelmed him, and his defenses failed, hard and fast. He had no time to think before his body vomited hard. The whiskey he’d downed earlier came back up in a sour rush, spraying across the bar outside the shared vision... and unfortunately, across 1332, as Thomas surrendered to unconsciousness.

  __________________________________________________________________________

  The smellless vomit dripped from her expressionless face, glistening faintly in the blue light. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t wipe it away. But beneath the composure, something cracked. Not from disgust, she had no sense of smell and no need for vanity, but from irritation—frustration with herself.

  She’d pushed too hard. Tried to make a point with spectacle, forgetting who she was dealing with. Thomas Delaney wasn’t built for this kind of overload. His mind, forged in the dust and grit of 19th-century Earth, had never even seen a moving picture, let alone cosmic metaphysical constructs. And now here he was, tossed headlong into a display that would fry most modern minds. She’d overestimated him. Or underestimated his limits.

  Worse, she’d let her pride get in the way. She’d wanted to teach him a lesson. Wanted him to take her seriously. Instead, she’d short-circuited his brain. And now she was covered in whiskey puke.

  "Why am I losing myself to this now of all times?" she asked herself. "After everything, am I really going to burn out the only real chance I have...that they have?"

  With a sigh, she closed her eyes and sent a silent plea into the void. A prayer, of sorts—not to the Creator, but to herself. A promise. No more temper. No more proving points. Just the mission. She raised her hand and snapped her fingers.

  The Mana Tree and Earth vanished.

  The world shifted instantly. The blinding rivers of light, the vast celestial tree, the overwhelming hum of power—it all blinked out. In its place, something quieter formed. Something simpler. 1332 didn’t choose the new setting herself. She let Thomas’s mind guide her, searching for the place he held closest, the space his subconscious clung to for safety. Most souls had one—a memory dressed as a sanctuary. She would do what she should have done all along. "Take him somewhere familiar, show him the truth in simple terms."

  But as the new reality settled around them, she blinked. Once. Twice. And then stumbled.

  She’d expected a blur of an image. A faded house, maybe a warm porch, a place where a smiling face could be found under a summer sky. That’s what most minds offered—soft, half-formed things that grew clearer with age and memories. Someone as young as Thomas had been should only have a barely discernible sanctuary. Not yet at the age where he would look back constantly at better times.

  But not Thomas. His was vivid. Painfully so. A flawless rendering drawn from memory with razor precision.

  They stood in a green valley surrounded by tall oaks and maple trees. A white church perched in the distance, serene and out of place. The sky overhead was impossibly blue, dotted with perfect clouds. It should have been beautiful.

  But it wasn’t.

  The land was marred, gouged, and broken by horrific war. Deep rents clawed through the earth, the telltale scars of artillery fire. Smoke coiled in the distance. Fires flickered through the trees like a demon's eyes. And then there was the dirt road. A sunken trench that cut through the field like an open wound, choked with the bodies of the dead and dying.

  She turned slowly, eyes locking onto the familiar sight—an open grave of tangled limbs and ruined uniforms. The screams of dying men echoed from the mass, some still moving to try to escape the press. One hand reached upward, trembling beneath the weight of the dead.

  A chill slid up her spine, causing her brain to halt. "Impossible," she thought. She didn’t feel things like this. She wasn’t built to. But something about this place scraped against her skin; it was raw and it was wrong. She felt it in her stomach and her soul, a pressure that shouldn’t exist. An emotion she had never encountered, but she knew all the same.

  Fear.

  Before she could name it, music drifted across the battlefield. Faint and eerie on the wind. A piano, its discordant notes weaving through the carnage like a whispered curse.

  It came from the far-distant white chapel.

  The building hadn’t changed, still whitewashed and pristine, but now it slowly loomed—too tall, too narrow, its steeple stretching like a needle into the sky. The music grew louder, clearer: a slow, deliberate piano melody, each note slightly off, warped like a music box left to rot. Then, voices joined the tune—soft, harmonious, and utterly wrong.

  A chorus of the dead.

  The words reached her ears as if whispered directly into her skull:

  A land of deepest shade,

  Unpierced by human thought;

  The dreary regions of the dead,

  Where all things are forgot!

  Still unconscious at her feet, Thomas began to spasm. His body jerked violently on the grass, limbs twitching with unnatural rhythm, as if the melody itself were pulling him like a puppet. And the field between her and the chapel—One, the field—was shrinking. Not physically, but perceptually. The space between them and the chapel was collapsing, folding in on itself. Each chord from the piano dragged them closer, like a noose tightening around their world.

  1332’s breath hitched. She didn’t breathe. Didn’t need to. But now, her lungs moved on their own, drawing air that wasn't there. The landscape pressed in, suffocating, and the screams from the trench fell silent, as if the world itself was holding its breath. Only the music remained. It was inside her now, crawling through her.

  She stared at the chapel, unblinking. The stained-glass windows flickered with shadowed movement. Something was inside. Something that knew she was here. Watching her, waiting for her.

  Her eyes twitched, but she wouldn't blink. She dared not take her eyes from the building. Fear, again. It sat heavy in her stomach, moving up her throat, thick and metallic. "This isn’t right," she thought, "This place is wrong." Whatever lived in Thomas’s subconscious had festered in this memory—a womb of white wood giving shelter to some sickness.

  “Nope,” she said aloud, voice cracking just slightly. “Somewhere else will work.”

  With a snap of her fingers, she tore them both free from the terrible place.

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  The battlefield vanished in an instant—no more trench, no more chapel, no more unnatural music scratching at the inside of her skull. The oppressive weight lifted like a stone pulled from her chest. For a heartbeat, she stood still, stunned by the sheer absence of fear.

  Relief came like a wave, sharp, clean, and almost overwhelming her to tears. Her shoulders relaxed before she realized they’d been tensed tightly enough to cause pain. The invisible pressure behind her eyes faded. Her breath came easier. The space around her no longer felt alive, and watching. "That place..." she thought, "I should never have let us near it." She looked down at the now still Thomas. "What the hell is buried inside that man’s mind?"

  1332 shook her head, wondering if she should call the whole thing off. "Maybe 2770 wasn't mistaken after all."

  She shook it off. 1332 knew the man Thomas had been. "Of course, he would have...demons in his head. Get over it and move on. Let's do it right this time."

  This place—this new setting—was one she had chosen. A memory of Thomas’s past, but not one soaked in blood. She had scoured his psyche and found a safer moment. Familiar. Grounding. A better place to begin again.

  They now stood in a golden wheat field, the sky above them awash in warm twilight. A yellow house rested peacefully at the far edge of the field, its front porch tucked beneath the arms of a sprawling oak. The breeze stirred the grain in gentle waves. Thomas would smell the dust and earth, the scent of memory. 1332 could not—but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the stillness—the safety. For the first time since this began, she felt in control again.

  __________________________________________________________________________

  Thomas groaned, his voice muffled by the soil. “Ugh... what’s that smell?” He shifted, lifting his head, and blinked slowly at the field around him. Confusion turned quickly to recognition. “No,” he whispered. “It can’t be…”

  He pushed himself upright on shaky legs, staring across the wheat to the yellow house beneath the oak. “I’m back...How?” he breathed. His hands trembled as he looked down at them—still rough, belonging to a killer. Not the hands of the boy who once called this place home.

  “This is just a dream,” he muttered. “Some twisted theater staged by that angel to mess with my head.” And then, the memory snapped fully into place. “The angel.” He spun around, searching—and found her standing a short distance away, serene amid the swaying grain. Something in him twisted. He hadn’t expected to feel anything anymore, but there it was, anger. Not confusion, not fear. Just fury.

  “You brought me here?” he growled, voice low. “Why?”

  He stalked toward her, voice rising with every step. “Why, Angel? Why here? You think dragging me back to this place is some comfort? You think twisting my memories into stage props makes all your games easier to swallow? That I will somehow forget how you just tried to melt my damn brain!”

  His face was red now, his jaw trembling—not from fear, but from restraint. “First, you rip me out of nothingness, then fry my brain with visions and riddles, and now you drop me into this? Into my childhood?” He gestured wildly at the field. “What’s next, huh? You want to pull out my parents’ graves? Parade the bones around while you lecture me on the meaning of life?”

  1332 didn’t flinch. She let him burn. She was now in control.

  “I was wrong,” she said simply, her voice even. “I pushed too fast. You’re right to be furious.” She took a step forward, her posture open, grounded. “But I brought you here to make it right. No more overwhelming visions of power. No more tests for your mind. Just the truth.”

  Thomas didn’t respond right away. His chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven bursts, like a man trying to breathe through smoke. His glare held steady, burning into her, daring her to push him one inch further. Then his hands began to curl inward. First, the fingers. Then the palms.

  His stomach dropped, and he turned cold. He looked down, watching the tremor build in his knuckles, that awful clenching motion beginning to take shape. His breath hitched. No, not now. The pressure swelled in his chest, creeping toward his throat. Could he feel it, that other part of him, coiling tighter beneath the surface? He waited, frozen in place and bracing. But the shift never came. No voice whispered. No black wave broke. His hands stayed clenched. Still trembling, but his. The breath he released was nearly a sob—relief, raw and quiet. All of it was driving him up a wall.

  He didn’t meet her eyes when he finally muttered, “Alright.” His voice was lower now, drained. “You want to fix it? Fine. Just tell me what you need.”

  She gave a single nod. “Fair enough,” she said softly.

  She lifted a hand and gestured to the earth. The wheat rustled as if caught in a sudden wind, parting in a wide circle. From the center, the soil rippled and rose, and a tree emerged—not summoned with fanfare, but growing steadily, naturally. An oak. Tall, strong, ordinary in shape, yet unnaturally perfect in form.

  Thomas watched, but didn’t speak. His expression was drawn—no awe, no anger. Just exhaustion. She could see it in the way his shoulders dipped, the slump in his posture. He wasn’t here for wonder anymore.

  “This,” she said, stepping toward the oak, “is not a trick. Not a vision. Just something familiar. Something simple enough to explain everything you need to know.”

  Thomas crossed his arms, eyes locked on the trunk. “So… still more symbols,” he muttered. “Great.”

  Thomas didn’t take his eyes off the tree. He didn’t trust it—not yet. Not after everything she’d already shown him. But it didn’t shimmer or pulse with divine light. It didn’t twist into something monstrous. It just stood there, tall and quiet, its leaves rustling in a wind he couldn’t feel.

  He hated how much that calmed him.

  1332 moved beside him, speaking with a calm he didn’t share. “This tree represents the One. It holds all the universe’s life energy. Think of it as a map… or a model, scaled down for clarity.”

  He kept his arms folded. “Right. Life energy. Mana. The glowing blue stuff,” he muttered.

  She pointed at his chest. “When you were born, you were made of two parts—your body, and a spark of mana. Same for everyone you’ve ever met. All of us carry a piece of the One.”

  He stared at the tree, then at the ground beneath his feet. As she spoke, the earth began to glow faintly with that same soft blue hue he’d seen threaded through the Mana Tree—only this time it didn’t feel distant. It felt close. Present. Like something humming just beneath the surface of the world.

  “The land, too,” she continued, her voice steady. “Planets, animals, people—it’s all the same. Physical forms, powered by mana. Connected through the One.”

  Thomas didn’t reply, but the idea sat with him. Heavy. The world he came from—corrupt, bloody, cruel—had shared the same energy as this impossibly perfect tree? As her? As him? He didn’t like that. He didn’t like the implication that all things started from the same root. It meant the evil wasn’t separate. It was part of the design.

  The glow faded, and he let out a slow breath, more from habit than comfort. “If we’re all connected,” he said quietly, “why does it feel like we spend our whole lives tearing each other apart?”

  She didn’t answer right away. Instead, the great oak gave a low, rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat echoing through the soil. It wasn’t sound, not exactly—more like a pressure behind the eyes, a thrum in the bones. From its center, a wave of blue light rolled outward, slow and even, like ripples across a still pond.

  Then flowers appeared. They bloomed along the branches—hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Each one is different. Colors, shapes, sizes—all unique. And all glowing gently. Some pulsed, casting little halos of light. When they bloomed, they disintegrated into small blue motes of light that moved into the tree. Other flowers dimmed and withered, their petals curling inward as if choked by something unseen. No light came from these flowers as they fell to the ground.

  “These flowers,” she said, her voice quieter now, “are life. Each one, a person, a world, or even something simpler, like an insect. The ones that bloom... those are the souls who grew the way the One intended—giving more than they took. They return to the One when they die. They’re not lost. They’re part of something greater.”

  Thomas narrowed his eyes. He watched a nearby flower wilt—its color draining into gray before it dropped from the branch and hit the dirt with a soundless thud. It didn’t vanish. It just... rolled away.

  He watched as more flowers followed. Not all of them "died" the same. Some shriveled slowly, fighting the end. Others blackened all at once, their collapse sudden and final. The ground around the tree’s base began to collect the fallen like debris around a drain. A quiet graveyard of souls that never disappeared.

  1332 didn’t sugarcoat it. “Some lives take more than they give. They twist the gift. Use it to harm, to hoard, to destroy. When their time ends, they're not worth absorbing. They fall away. Empty husks of what could have been.”

  Thomas swallowed hard. The idea disturbed him, but not for the reason she probably thought. It wasn’t the withering buds that unnerved him—it was the stillness of those fallen. He knew that kind of stillness. Had felt it inside himself—that numbness. He didn’t ask what happened to them after they fell. He already knew.

  1332’s voice stayed even. “This was the balance. Life blooms. Life returns. Some wither away by their own choice. Chaos and Order guiding it all. Until something changed.”

  She pointed, and Thomas followed her gaze to the trunk, near its center, where a single flower swelled unnaturally large. It pulsed with a pale white glow, brighter than the rest, but that light began fading. Slowly, steadily, it dimmed like a dying lantern. “That flower,” she spat, “ represents an entire world of souls.”

  Her words landed hard; her tone was different now, stripped of performance. This wasn’t poetry any longer. This was now a history lesson that she didn't want to share. “A world that had grown more advanced than most,” she continued. “A people gifted with both abundant magic and science. Untold power in their hands. They had harmony, for a time. They could’ve given back more than any before them.”

  Thomas watched the flower’s light flicker, then vanish. It withered and grew black, but it didn’t fall. It stayed anchored to the tree, its petals blackened, curling inward like a fist. Nearby buds began to dim as well, their light seeming to leech away into the larger flower.

  “They fell,” she said. “Not just one or two, but all of them within that world. Their greed, their fear, their lust for power—they gave themselves completely to Chaos. And the One... didn’t know how to let them go. It had never needed to cut away a flower before. Nature dictated that they would die like any other and fall away.”

  The corrupted flower didn’t fall, didn't die. The others had dropped once they went dark, rolling away like dead fruit. But this one… it stayed. Its petals turning into a black darker than coal, then slowly they unfurled, opening like a wound. And as it did, the withering decay spread faster than before. All of the bright flowers around it dimmed one by one, drained by the black rose clinging to the tree, but even as these flowers blackened, they no longer fell as well. All of them now clinging to the surface of the great Oak.

  "The One could feel the infection, and as it felt more of its children being lost, it attempted something new." The tree's powerful energy thrummed, and a bright flash blinded Thomas for a moment.

  When his vision cleared, there was something new. The tree itself looked diminished, like it had shrunk down on itself. But now there were two new features.

  1332 moved to what looked like a new flower standing on its own. It resembled a sunflower, but was massive, nearly 10 feet tall. It was also far too perfect to be considered natural. It stood a few feet from the Oak and glowed a bright white. Thomas also noticed a colorful line of fire that seemed to have cut off the blackened flowers from the rest of the tree. The line encircled the flowers, their spread of black corruption held back by the flame, no longer reaching untainted flowers.

  1332 spoke, caressing the new lone sunflower, "This was the birth of my people."

  "You were born after these events?" Thomas assumed they would have been as immortal and ancient as the One.

  "Correct, we were part of the Ones' answer to the corruption that had taken hold in its body." She moved from the flower to the burning line in the tree. "Along with the great barrier that was created to seperate the corrupted mana from the rest of the One's power."

  Thomas walked forward to look closer at the flowers that had turned black. "So these worlds no longer spread corruption to the rest of the Tree? Did you ever find out what caused this?"

  1332 shook her head, "No, this is when we get to the reason I brought you back from damnation, Thomas." Seeing she had his attention, 1332 walked forward and placed a hand on a flower outside the ring of fire. "My kind were created to become... caretakers of the One. To help make sure no more flowers can corrupt its power again." She pulled the fading flower from the trunk and dropped it among the flowers that surrounded it.

  She did this a few more times while saying, "We can help guide life outside of the ring of power." She moved to the flowers that were within the burning circle. She tried reaching for one, but her hand stopped above the black flowers. Hovering above them. "We soon found, however, that we are not able to enter the 'quarantine zone' as we came to call it. This is because, though we can help guide the One's power and act as its caregiver, the corrupted worlds are outside the power of the One."

  Thomas furrowed his brow, asking, "How is that possible? I thought all life was under the One's power?"

  "If the rules of nature held, it would be, but that is why these worlds are wrong, and why the One needed to cut them off from the rest of its mana. It had lost control of these worlds."

  "So those worlds were left to... what? Are there still living people there, or are they all just dead and rotting?"

  "No, we found that while these worlds were filled with corruption, living beings were still trapped within. Their souls left to never return to the One. Cut off from their eternal rewards."

  "Seems wrong."

  1332 looked at him, all softness gone from her as she said, "Wrong doesn't begin to cover it. Imagine that you live your life perfectly. Kind to all and uplifting to your fellow man, only to die and find nothing but waiting. Sitting in a purgatory, slowly going insane from the isolation from the Creator you knew in your soul you were supposed to return to. Think of something as perfect and innocent as a child. Dying before their time."

  Her voice grew mournful as she looked at a small flower stuck within the corruption. "By the One's law, these innocents should find rest and comfort within its streams, but instead they wait alone and isolated. Unable to move on because it would mean bringing the corruption with them. To infect more worlds."

  "So what? They were just left to rot?" Thomas felt the rage he always felt when talking of the suffering of the innocent.

  "No. We knew there had to be a solution. That even though we couldn't go within the quarantined area, surely something else could. Something had to be able to go in and clear these worlds of corruption. Allowing them to return to their creator."

  Thomas had it dawn on him then. "I'm guessing that's where I come in?"

  1332 nodded, but her eyes stayed on the blackened bloom. “The idea was simple. If we couldn’t touch the corruption from outside... then maybe something born from within could. A soul. Placed like a graft into the rot—to heal it from inside.”

  “You placed someone into one of those corrupted worlds?”

  She nodded. “We chose one of the smaller worlds first, on the outside of the mass—a test. The "Chosen" mortal we picked had lived an incredible life. They were as close to incorruptible as your kind can ever get. You would call them a Saint."

  "We pulled them from their eternal rest and gave them a choice. We knew, though, what they would pick. They were placed into the world. Cut off from us and tasked with finding a way to cleanse the world, and allow the one to retake those trapped within. We had no idea if they would be able to. We knew that we might be condemning them to an eternity of separation.

  1332 looked at him then, a smile forming as she continued, "They lived, watched, and endured. Investigating a solution with the denizens of that world. And when the time came… they uncovered the root of the corruption. They destroyed it.”

  "How? What was it that they needed to do?"

  "It varies from world to world. In this case, it was one of the Keepers. Who you would call God in your world."

  Thomas looked at her in surprise, "Their God was corrupted?" He then realized something, 'Wait! They killed their God?"

  She just nodded, like what she was implying made perfect sense. "Remember that there is only one true God. The others, Keepers, as we call them, are just as much a part of the One as you or I. And just like you or I, they can die or end."

  Thomas couldn't believe what she was saying. "Then again," he thought to himself, "Is it that much crazier than anything else you've seen or heard the past few hours?"

  “So, that’s how you fix it?” he asked. “By sending someone in to hunt down whatever is causing their world to be cut off?”

  “To cleanse the world,” she said softly, “the corruption must be found… and then destroyed. Releasing what anchors it to the rest of the corrupted worlds. Allowing the One to reabsorb the trapped Mana within.”

  “So... If I had to guess what comes next, you want me to go into one of those places,” he muttered, “dig through the filth... and burn out whatever’s keeping it stuck?”

  1332 stepped towards him, her eyes searching his face. “Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what I want.”

  Before he could reply, she reached out and gently took his hand. Her fingers were cold, firm, but not unkind. She guided him to the trunk of the tree, to one of the blackened blooms nestled low in the infected grouping. “Go on,” she said quietly. “Try.”

  He hesitated. Then reached out.

  The moment his fingers brushed the rotted petals, something shifted. A tremor ran through the roots beneath his feet. The flower pulsed once, then tore free like rotten flesh peeling off bone. It came loose in his grip with a wet, cracking sound, black flakes crumbling between his fingers. For a moment, it writhed—then turned pale gold, and dissolved into a cloud of blue flecks that drifted upward into the tree.

  Thomas stumbled back a step, eyes wide at the emotions that seemed to explode out from both the flower and the tree at their reunion. The white line separating the corruption shifted subtly, extending toward the now-empty space. A soft thrum echoed through the branches. The One had reclaimed what had been lost.

  He stared at his hand, still tingling with the sensation. The rot was gone. Not just removed, but… cleansed. Transformed. The light he’d seen return to the tree hadn’t been forced—it had wanted to go back. Needed to.

  “Each soul trapped in corruption is like that,” 1332 said beside him. “Waiting. Stuck in decay. Unable to return. They’ve forgotten who they are… or what they were meant to become. You help them remember. Or… remove what can’t be saved.”

  He looked at the other blackened blooms. Dozens. Hundreds. Each one a world? A people? He couldn’t imagine the number of souls tangled inside.

  “So what happens if I pull one that’s still rotten?” he asked. “No light. No return. Just... black.”

  She nodded once. “Then you let it go. Cast it aside. The One won’t reclaim what can’t be healed. But when even one is restored… balance shifts.”

  He stood still, hand resting against the bark, feeling that slow, steady pulse beneath his palm. The energy felt old, not just ancient, but tired, desperate, and pleading.

  He shook his head then, saying, "Why me, though?" He looked at her, asking, "You said the other Chosen... you said they would be considered a Saint in my world. I'm about as far from a Saint as it gets. So why use me? Aren't you worried I would cause more harm than good?"

  1332 for the first time shrugged. Thomas wanted to scoff, but she quickly continued, "It's true. You're not a Saint. Not some great General or leader of men. Most would say that you should have stayed in Damnation."

  "I would agree with that sentiment."

  She ignored him, "But Chosen are not just Saints or perfect moral individuals. The thing that separates a Chosen from the rest is that they are set. They won't be swayed from their beliefs, and their beliefs, at least, overlap with protecting those who can't protect themselves. You may not be a Saint, but I know that you will always choose to save the innocent. Even if that means allowing one to kill you herself."

  Thomas didn't know what to say to that. Finally, he answered, "I think you're wrong. I think plenty of innocents died because of my choices. I think that whatever it is that you're seeing within me is incorrect and hopeful wishing. Something is broken in me 1332, and I don't think it's fixed just because I died."

  "That may be true, Thomas... in fact, I think I know that something is deeply broken within your soul, but I'll be honest with you." She made sure he was looking into her brown eyes when she said, "I don't care." Before he could respond, she clarified, "Chosen are picked for all sorts of reasons, and I'm picking you, Thomas, because I think we need someone who can get a job done no matter what. I can't tell you why right now, but there are plenty of worlds that we haven't seen cleared of the corruption. We've sent dozens, if not hundreds, of Chosen to some of these worlds, and they haven't been successful. I think it's because we haven't sent someone like you to those worlds."

  “So that’s it?” he muttered. “You pulled me out of the dark because you need a killer? All the good guys have failed... so you're sending me?”

  “We’ve sent Saints before,” 1332 said quietly. “Thinkers. Healers. They brought light to the edges. But not this time. Not for the worlds that are left.” Her eyes found his. “This time, I'm sending someone who knows how to kill—and survive what killing costs. Someone willing to become death themselves if it means protecting the innocent.”

  Thomas didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The answer was carved into the lines of his face, written in every scar on his soul. She hadn’t chosen him in spite of what he was. She'd chosen him because of it.

  He pulled his hand away from the tree, letting the silence settle again. “So, where am I going? And who do you need killed?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  That made him turn. “You're the one pulling the strings. What do you mean you don't know?”

  She gave the smallest shake of her head. “I opened the door. That’s all. You have to choose the destination.”

  He studied her carefully, watching her face. Her posture was perfect. Her voice never wavered. But something behind her eyes shifted, just for a breath. Enough to make him wonder what she wasn’t saying.

  He didn’t press. Didn’t need to. The game had changed again, and he could feel it. But whatever plan she had, it didn’t matter—not to him. He was just a part, he could tell, but 1332 had something else going on underneath everything. Thomas may be some country hick, but he knew when he was being used for something. "Does it matter?" he asked himself, "She has something she's holding back from me, but, for whatever reason, I feel that she's not keeping it secret from me... but maybe for me? Or maybe for someone else's sake?" It didn't matter in the end to him. He had killed with less information, and he had died on behalf of less trustworthy individuals.

  He looked once more at the blackened flowers clinging to the tree's surface. All that rot. All those trapped souls. Begging for someone to take up the knife and cut them loose.

  He sighed and rolled his shoulders back.

  “Fine,” he said. “You need a killer, and you found one. Just remember, I would have been fine staying in damnation.”

  With that, the memory from his childhood began to dissolve.