Chapter 11 – Thornfruit Pact

The rain in Ashroot didn't fall like elsewhere.

It seeped.

It drifted down in slow, sticky threads, as though the clouds were squeezing sap instead of water. It clung to the stone and bark, soaking into roots that had long stopped growing. The villagers stayed inside when it rained — not out of fear, but reverence. The rain brought memory.

Yuzu sat beneath the eaves of the Shed, legs drawn up to his chest, the fruit in his satchel pulsing faintly against his side. The fight with the Watcher still echoed in his bones — not just the physical strain, but the taste of it. Synthetic flavor. Artificial spirit. The realization hadn't left him since.

They were building versions of him.

Not letting fruit awaken.

But forging it.

He clenched his fists, the sigil on his hand flickering beneath his sleeve like a wound trying to close.

Mira sat nearby, sharpening a thorn-dagger against a strip of stonefruit bark. Her spirits floated close, unusually quiet.

"You've been in your orchard again," she said.

He nodded. "Something's changing."

"Faster than it should?"

"Yes."

Mira didn't look up. "That's what happens when you grow without seasons."

Yuzu exhaled. "There's a voice now. Not the Primordial. Not the Gardener. This one's… mine. But not me."

She paused. "Then you need an anchor."

He frowned. "An anchor?"

"A pact," she said, standing. "Come with me."

They walked through the misted paths of Ashroot, past silent houses and gardens that shimmered faintly with aura wards. The village had felt still before. Now it felt like it was bracing for impact.

She led him to a grove he hadn't seen before — seven twisted trees grown in a spiral, their trunks hollowed into arches. A single flower bloomed at the center — pale blue, with petals like spun sugar and edges stained red.

"This is the Pactflower," Mira said. "It listens. And if you're willing, it binds."

Yuzu stepped closer. The scent hit him like a memory: fig-sweet, clove-sharp, with a trace of something bitter and buried.

"What kind of pact?" he asked.

Mira folded her arms. "You choose. With yourself. With your tree. With what you want to become."

Yuzu knelt.

He closed his eyes.

And let his orchard rise.

The moment he entered, the tree was waiting.

Not passive. Not dreaming. Awake.

Its roots stretched far now, branching into darkness. Its bark gleamed obsidian-black with gold veins pulsing like veins. New skills orbited it like fruits unripe — their names not yet formed, their flavors not yet chosen.

Yuzu stepped forward.

"I want to make a pact," he said aloud, unsure if the tree would answer.

It did not speak.

But it opened.

A fissure split down its trunk, revealing a hollow space filled with light and shadow, writhing together like syrup and smoke. Inside hovered a sigil — not the one on his hand, but a second one. Smaller. Fractured. Unformed.

His reflection.

The voice — the younger one, the one that had whispered before — stirred.

"If you do this, there's no pruning. No going back."

"I know."

"Then what do you want?"

Yuzu didn't hesitate.

"I want to stay myself. Even when the fruit tries to rewrite me."

The sigil flared.

The light inside the tree twisted, weaving around the fractured emblem like vines around a wound. The orchard trembled. A single fruit dropped from a branch above — dark red, shaped like a starburst, humming with uncertain flavor.

Yuzu reached for it—

And bit.

The taste wasn't violent.

It was personal.

Painful, but honest. Sour with regret. Sweet with stubbornness. Bitter with truth.

The orchard pulsed around him.

And the voice said:

"Then bind. Thorn to thorn. Lie to lie. Flavor to flame."

A mark etched itself beneath his ribs.

Not a sigil.

A scar.

When he opened his eyes, Mira was still there.

The Pactflower had closed.

But a new bloom now opened in his palm — thorn-shaped, translucent, flickering between fruit and flame.

"What did you name it?" she asked.

Yuzu stared at the flicker in his hand.

"Thornfruit."

She nodded slowly. "Then you're one step closer."

"To what?"

"To the truth," she said. "Or the burn it leaves behind."

That night, the rain thickened.

Yuzu lay in his cot, the new scar beneath his ribs burning faintly. In his mind, he walked the orchard — not as a dream, but as a keeper. Each branch of his tree held something now: Vesca's flare. Mira's splice. The Watcher's artificial resonance. But the Thornfruit — the pact — glowed at the core.

A skill blinked into existence:

[New Passive: Pact of the Thornfruit – Rank E]When you resist flavor corruption, you gain +1 resistance. When you lie to protect the orchard, you regain spirit.

A pact that grew stronger the more he fought becoming what they wanted.

He exhaled.

And somewhere beyond the orchard, in a place he had never seen but somehow knew — a second Thornfruit tree grew.

This one wasn't his.

But it was watching.

And waiting.