A Beautiful Flower Wilts Gloriously
While Asahi and I stood there catching our breath, Florene coughed up blood a short distance away.
The punches had done more damage than I’d expected.
But the sight of her coughing didn’t relax me. It only made me wary.
She was still a Superior Spirit. As long as she remained alive, there was always the chance she could pull one more trick from somewhere I couldn’t see.
Florene tried to stand.
She made it halfway—then dropped back down.
In the end, she gave up on her feet and leaned against a broken tree stump instead, breathing heavily. Every breath looked labored. The way her chest rose and fell, the way her shoulders sagged, the way her fingers trembled against the bark.
She didn’t look like someone who could keep fighting.
I loosened my body and started walking toward her.
Asahi immediately frowned. “Wait.”
“It’s fine,” I said without looking at him. “She can’t fight anymore.”
I ignored the warning and kept walking.
Florene saw me coming.
She did nothing.
No roots. No petals. No tricks.
She only watched.
When I reached her, I looked down at her with a mix of scorn and the last remnants of my anger. Then I let the expression go.
There was no point in carrying hostility into a conversation that had finally run out of lies.
I crouched beside her.
“I escaped your cage,” I said simply. “Now it’s time to keep your end of the bargain.”
Florene looked at me, coughed once more, then smiled.
It wasn’t mocking. Not this time.
“You know…” she said softly, “I lied before.”
I stayed quiet.
There was something strangely serene about her face now. Melancholy. Tired. Almost peaceful in a way that made it hard to interrupt her.
“When I said Syria shouldn’t be friends with a person like you…” she continued. “I lied.”
Then she lifted her eyes and met mine directly.
“I’m actually glad she chose you.”
“…Why?” I asked.
“Because an Arch Human is still better than an ordinary human.”
My eyes narrowed at once.
“Tell me,” I said. “How do you know Asahi and I are Arch Humans? We never told you that.”
“From the human you call Marcus.”
My eyes widened.
I leaned closer without thinking.
“So Marcus told you?”
Florene’s gaze drifted—not away from me, but inward.
And for a moment, it was as if the forest itself remembered with her. The night it all began.
---
Marcus had been breathing hard.
Each breath scraped through him like broken glass as he gripped his swords and charged her again.
Whatever path he chose, whatever angle he tried, he never reached her. Roots intercepted him. Thorns cut across his route. Petals rose like knives. Florene stood beyond it all, watching him with visible dissatisfaction.
“Give up, human,” she said. “Your attempt to defeat me is futile.”
Marcus planted his feet and held his swords tighter, dragging in two heavy breaths.
“I only need to keep you here…” he said, voice ragged, “until they escape.”
Florene tilted her head. “Do you really think they can?”
Marcus looked at her with the kind of expression people only wear when they have already accepted death.
“I know they will.”
“And what makes you so sure?” Florene asked. “I could kill you with a flick of my wrist and catch up to them before you draw your last breath.”
“You can never kill young Krai,” Marcus said with absolute certainty. “He is special.”
That made Florene pause.
It was the confidence in his voice more than the words themselves that made her pause.
“And if my hunch is right,” Marcus continued, “you’ll regret acting so rashly.”
Florene clicked her tongue. “What nonsense. Anything that dares to destroy my flower field deserves swift punishment.”
Then she raised one hand, curiosity overcoming irritation.
“But go on. What makes you think I’ll regret it?”
Marcus inhaled once, then spoke.
“Because Krai…”
He paused.
“…might be an Arch Human.”
For the first time, Florene’s face truly changed.
Not anger. Curiosity.
Sharp, immediate, hungry.
“You cannot be serious,” she said. “Arch Humans have been extinct for over seven hundred years.”
Then her expression hardened. “What makes you think that weak child could be one?”
Marcus lowered his swords slightly.
“I’m not sure myself,” he admitted. “At this point, it’s just a hunch.”
Then he looked up again.
“But he’ll grow strong. And once he learns to use magic… he’ll be formidable.”
Florene studied him in silence.
No lies. She could sense none.
And if he was telling the truth… If the child truly had not yet formed a contract. That would explain his weakness.
Then this was not a nuisance. She thought. It was an opportunity.
Florene lifted her hand.
“You’ve intrigued me, human,” she said. “But this ends now.”
Roots bound Marcus’s arms and legs in an instant.
Before he could break free, flower petals rose from the earth and folded over him.
In a mere instant, Marcus was trapped inside a carnivorous plant.
---
Florene looked back at me.
I stared at her, still trying to hold all of that in one place.
“So all this…” I asked slowly, “All of this happened because you thought I might be an Arch Human?”
She nodded faintly.
“But I thought you wanted to punish us for destroying your flower field,” I said. “You even tried to guilt-trip me over making Syria sad.”
“Yes,” Florene said, closing her eyes briefly. “I needed my reason to sound logical...”
Asahi stepped forward at that, his face caught between anger and disbelief.
“So what about when you used Urizee to kill me?” he demanded. “What exactly was your plan there?”
His voice was sharp now, stripped of all softness.
Florene opened her eyes and looked at him.
“When I heard Krai say he didn’t want to fight me,” she replied, “I needed another way to enrage him. To force his emotions to the surface.”
She glanced between us.
“I tried the other two women first. But their resistance to mind control was stronger than I expected.”
Asahi’s mouth twisted with fury.
“So you chose Urizee?!” he shouted. “I could have died! What then? What were you going to do if I had actually died?”
This time, it was all outrage.
No performance. Just anger.
“Asahi,” I said quietly. “Calm down.”
He looked like he wanted to keep shouting.
Florene, meanwhile, remained perfectly composed—wearing that same faint, knowing smile that made it impossible to tell whether she regretted anything at all.
Honestly speaking, Asahi’s reaction made sense.
Mine probably didn’t.
Then I looked back at Florene.
“He’s right,” I said. “What if he had died? Was that part of your plan, too?”
“Not exactly,” Florene said.
“What?!” Asahi snapped.
“But I had accounted for it,” she continued, unbothered by the outburst. “In the Zeus Woods, when a person dies, the soul lingers for several days before it disappears.”
She looked at Asahi.
“If you had truly died, I would have simply brought you back to life.”
Both of us stared at her.
My eyes widened. Asahi’s did too.
She said it so casually. Like reviving a person was no more difficult than regrowing a flower.
Then, from where she sat, Florene inclined her head in a shallow apologetic bow.
“It was never my intention to kill any of you,” she said calmly. “Forgive me.”
For a moment, neither of us knew what to do with that.
“Tch. Whatever,” Asahi muttered at last, backing away a step.
I stayed where I was.
“I see…” I said slowly. “So that’s why you never really held back. Because you could just bring us back if we died.”
“Yes.”
I leaned closer again.
“Wait.”
The thought hit me all at once.
“Does that mean Marcus’s soul is still wandering these woods?”
Florene’s expression changed the moment I asked.
Something quieter entered her eyes.
“Sadly, that would be impossible,” she said. “Too many days have passed since you first entered the woods.”
“…Oh.”
My face darkened. But she wasn’t done.
“It is impossible for a soul to wander, while it is still in its body.” She continued, “
My head snapped up.
“What? Does that mean—”
“Yes,” Florene said.
The next words changed everything.
“Marcus is still alive.”
My eyes lit up so fast it almost hurt.
“Well then, where is he?!” I asked.
Florene looked at me with that strange melancholy again.
Then she gave me a smile that was somehow both kind and eerie.
“You’re very kind, Krai,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Promise me,” she said softly, “that you won’t feel sad about what I’m about to say.”
“…O-okay.” I placed a hand against my chest. “You have my word.”
Florene took a slow breath.
“For Marcus to return,” she said, “I have to die.”
The words hit me harder than I expected.
Not because I didn’t want her to die. If that was the price for Marcus coming back, I would have paid it without hesitation.
No—the weight came from somewhere else.
Syria. Her sadness.
The sour taste this would leave on the reunion I had wanted so badly.
Florene looked at me with grave seriousness.
“Do you think,” she asked, “you can take my life to make that happen?”
I paused.
Not because I doubted the answer. But because saying it out loud would make it real.
Then I answered anyway.
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No softness. Only the bittersweet truth of what I felt inside.
“If I have to choose between you and Sir Marcus,” I said, “then I would take your life without even thinking twice.”
Florene’s eyes widened slightly.
She searched my face, looking for hesitation that wasn’t there.
Then she closed her eyes.
“I see.”
When she opened them again, her voice had changed. It had become quieter.
“But I do have one final request.”
“What is it?”
“Would you form a contract with Syria?” she asked. “Take her with you.”
I fell silent.
The request was so sudden, so naked in its desperation, that for a moment I didn’t know how to answer.
She wasn’t offering Syria. She was entrusting her. And that made it heavier.
Still…
“I’m afraid I'm too busy to look after a child,” I said, eyes closing briefly as I answered.
“Right…”
Florene didn’t press.
She smiled as if she had expected that answer all along. Then she straightened herself against the stump.
“This is the end for me,” she said. “Farewell, Arch Human Krai.”
She lowered one hand to the ground with extraordinary gentleness, like she was touching the head of a sleeping child.
Her other hand rested against her stomach.
Then she began.
“Innocent flowers of the woods,” she murmured, “I offer my apology to thee…”
A calm wave of green mana pulsed out from her hand.
Not violent. Not loud.
It spread through the earth like a heartbeat.
“This is your chance to live again.”
Her voice was almost a whisper now.
“World-Class Magic—Gravegarden Rebirth.”
The mana deepened.
The pulse became stronger, but never harsher. It rolled through the forest in concentric waves, passing through the places our battle had destroyed.
Asahi and I turned our heads. And watched the woods restore themselves.
Broken trees rose again from shattered stumps. Scorched flowers pushed back through ash and bloomed. Grass returned over charred earth.
Every scrap of plant life we had damaged during the fight was brought back in a soft, impossible tide of rebirth.
It was not overwhelming.
It was beautiful.
When I looked back at Florene—my eyes widened.
Her body had become a statue of rainbow-colored ash. She had poured everything into the spell. All her mana.
And for a spirit, mana was life.
Florene was dead.
Yet even in that ashen stillness, she wore a smile. A small one. Peaceful. As if she believed this ending was right.
Having to kill someone is one thing. Watching them give their life away for your sake is something else entirely.
Without thinking, I lifted a hand to my chest and closed my eyes in silence.
A gentle wind moved through the woods. It caught her ash and carried it away piece by piece until nothing remained.
When I opened my eyes again, the ashes were drifting into the gold of the setting sun, glowing as they vanished.
I stood. And turned my back on them.
“It was nice knowing you, Florene,” I said under my breath.
Asahi kept watching the last of her drift away long after I stopped.
