Scene 1: "Echo Wounds"
Julio is no longer a normal planet—it's a chorus.
People speak in borrowed voices. Dreams now arrive as shared experiences.
A young girl whispers her father's memories of war. A street vendor hums a lullaby from a language they never spoke.
Even machines are haunted—nav systems mutter human names.
Maiku walks through the city alone.
But every breath brings a whisper.
His own thoughts are no longer only his.
Maiku : "I don't remember thinking that… did I?"
And buried under the layers—he hears someone humming. A melody from the Bloom Core. Soft. Ancient. Dissonant.
---
Scene 2: Witherwalk
The spire blooms black for the first time.
Jiro moves through a Bloomed outpost.
No attack. No words. Just presence.
Where he walks, the flora recoils.
Petals curl. Stems rot.
He is decay incarnate.
A curious young soldier approaches—touches his shoulder.
His hand dies instantly—skin grays, veins vanish.
Jiro turns slowly. His voice is not a growl—it's a whisper across a corpse field.
Soldier(scared) :"You were never supposed to come back."
He (Jiro) walks on. The vines don't follow him.
They flee.
---
Scene 3: Bloodmark
Maiku wakes up.
His hand aches. The final Bloom mark pulses—half-gold, half-black.
It's no longer dormant.
His reflection shows two eyes—one normal. One not.
He stumbles. Collapses. Vision flashes:
The Bloom Core pulsing in harmony.
Jiro, split open, dripping black spores, standing before a spire made of bone-vines.
Lysera…a name without a face.
Lorian flickers into view—glitching.
Lorian (serious): "You didn't escape, Maiku. You broke the seal. The root chose you for more than resistance."
Maiku tries to speak, but his throat burns with flower ash.
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Scene 4: "The Bloom Archive"
Reen breaks through the final Archive layer.
The screen is old. Text bleeds in and out. She finds a file that shouldn't exist:
PROJECT: EDEN BACKUP
Host-Mind: Lysera No-Vahn
"Dreaming state: 19% stability. Last sync: 250 years ago."
An attached sound file—just heartbeats. Then, humming. The same melody Maiku heard.
Reen stares in horror.
Reen: "It didn't evolve. It copied someone. It's been… trying to remember who it was."
And Lysera might still be alive—somewhere under Julio. Still dreaming.
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Scene 5: "Momonato's Mind"
We see him at last.
Momonato, alone, inside the old Core Chamber.
His face is wrong—half-beautiful, half-flower. One eye is a spinning sunflower with a pupil.
He speaks to no one. Or to everything.
Momonato(smirking): "If we can't control it, we become it. I chose to be the filter. The firewall. The conductor."
He injects another strand of Bloom code into himself.
His body cracks.
He doesn't flinch.
It happens... he is fully bloomed.
He smirks and says nothing.
---
Scene 6: "The Withered Message"
A terrified rebel stumbles into the crew's safehouse.
He plays a recording—captured from the Bloom Spire.
Jiro. Standing alone. Surrounded by black, dead flora.
His voice is split—human and synthetic:
Jiro ; "You wanted rebirth. You begged for paradise. But the Bloom… doesn't ascend. It absorbs. It silences. I saw the end. And I bring it now."
He holds up his hands—black petals drift from them like falling snow.
Jiro : "The roots are awake. And they are hungry."
The transmission ends. The screen bursts into ash. No trace left.
Jakku(worried) : "Gift, this is bad....really bad."
Gift : "Agreed."
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Scene 7: "Black Petal Rain"
The next morning.
It rains. But not water. Not gold.
Ash-black petals fall across Julio.
Where they touch:
Drones stall.
Shields break.
Humans sleepwalk, caught in shared hallucinations.
And through the Bloom's center spire…
Jiro steps out.
Cloaked in vines. Eyes pure black.
His veins no longer blood—but ink.
The Bloom is afraid of him now.
And so is everyone else.
---
Final Shot:
The crew stands in silence, watching the sky.
Petals fall like snow.
And in each of their minds, they hear Jiro's voice—
Jiro : "I am not reborn. I am what comes after the last flower."
Matthew : "Shit!!!!"
---
To Be Continued…..
Narrator:
And so, the bloom darkens.
What began as rebirth—a song of roots and stars—has now turned into a requiem.
Julio is no longer a planet. It's a living memory machine, haunted by ghosts that were never born. Maiku, once the chosen seed, now carries a fracture of something older. Lysera stirs beneath the crust like a half-remembered dream, and Momonato... well, he's become the very firewall he once warned against.
But it's Jiro who steals the breath of gods.
The one who did not return to forgive—but to rot.
Wither is not chaos. Wither is answer.
To betrayal. To pain. To the lie of paradise.
And as black petals drift across skies once golden, each heartbeat in the crew tightens like a string pulled too far. Because this is no longer a war of machines and roots. This is belief unraveling.
The Bloom is remembering.
The crew is fracturing.
And the Withered King walks.
What do you do when the thing you feared… fears something else?
Chapter 18 awaits.