Ch.24 : The Bloom Beneath the Skin

Scene 1: The Hall of Voices

The silence is louder than any battle.

It feels strange no Feeders

No guardians

Nothing.....

Every step into Momonato's lair feels like stepping deeper into something alive.

The Bloom breathes.

The walls twitch like muscle. The light pulses like a heartbeat.

Then—

The whispers begin.

They come from nowhere and everywhere.

Gift hears screams. The ones he failed. Faces melt from the walls—villagers, allies, innocents. His hands shake. One of the voices screams:

"Why did you promise us safety?"

Reen hears her younger self — cold, calm, almost alien.

"You knew it was a trap. You led them into it."

Maiku gets guilt. He gets Lysera

He remembers her sops

Her smiles

The way she acted and he misses it....

Jakku hears nothing. Just the sound of his own heart beating in the void.

But they all move forward.

Because if they stop, even for a second — the Bloom will remember how to eat them.

---

Scene 2: Maiku's Flashback / Lorian's Ghost

A flash of white.

Maiku stumbles. The others fade.

He's in the past. But twisted — corrupted. Lorian stands in armor that's too clean, a memory too soft.

Lorian (smiling sadly):

"You still think this is your fault. You really are that arrogant."

Maiku chokes. Tries to speak.

Lorian:

"They'll break, Maiku. Not because they're weak. But because this world doesn't want them whole."

Maiku falls to one knee. Vision swimming. Lorian kneels too, touches his shoulder.

Lorian (quiet):

"Keep them breathing. That's the mission now."

Flash ends.

Maiku gasps — Jakku catches him before he drops.

He nods. No explanation. Just—

Maiku(determined): "Let's go."

---

Scene 3: Blood Toll

The tunnel splits. Cracks. Bloom veins begin erupting from the walls.

Then Irogi appears.

Half-Bloomed. Half-mad.

He grins with teeth that aren't his anymore.

Irogi:

"Welcome to the price. One of you stays behind. Or dies. Doesn't matter who. Choose."

He gives them three options.

Kill Reen. The Bloom likes the smell of her guilt.

Cripple Matthew, let him slow the collapse with fire and fury.

Or Gift, broken eye and all, offers himself. Again.

Silence.

Then—

Jakku laughs.

It's not right. It's not sane.

Irogi blinks. The Bloom within him hesitates.

Irogi(scared): "What the hell is so funny?"

Jakku flips forward. Blades out.

Cuts off Irogi's hand.

It grows back — slow and steady.

Jakku pulls something from his coat.

A tooth. Rotten. Massive. Still pulsing faintly.

Flashback insert: Jakku quietly looting the Warden's corpse. No words. Just instinct. He doesn't know why he needs to take it he just does.

Jakku(unsure) : "I trust myself and this will come in hand somehow."

Back to now:

He throws the tooth.

It hits Irogi's chest — and the Bloom screams.

Fungus begins spreading across his face. He howls and vanishes into the shadows.

The team breathes again.

No one dies.

Not today.

---

Scene 4: Jiro and Irogi – A New Pact

Irogi staggers through the Bloom-warped halls, his voice raw.

He finds Jiro, sitting on a throne of vines and bones.

Irogi (pleading):

"Let me join you. Let me burn them."

Jiro says nothing.

Florin steps out of the dark behind him.

She grins.

Florin : "Did you bring anything useful?"

Irogi shows the infection on his chest. Smiles through the rot.

Irogi: "Just this. And rage."

Jiro finally nods

Jiro : "Then let's burn the rest of the world."

---

Scene 5: The Chamber of Momonato

The final chamber opens like a wound.

There are no soldiers.

No guards.

Just bodies. Torn. Rotted. Feeder corpses stacked against the walls.

The team stops. Stares. No words.

Gift (barely audible): "…He killed them all."

Matthew(shocked) : "But why..."

Then they see him.

Momonato.

Or what's left of him.

He is fully bloomed from within and from the outside but he still has his Feeder features like two tounges e.t.c—But....something old has made its home inside him.

Momonato (softly): "They betrayed me. Voted to destroy the Bloom. To destroy me."

FLASHBACK SEQUENCE

The Council screaming, demanding war. Momonato smiling. Closing the door. No more Council.

Momonato (to the crew, smiling): "I saved them from that burden. They're all in a better place now."

That smile reaches his eyes.

Jakku(thinks to himself, creeped out): "What even the hell is this."

Gift (thinks to himself): "He killed his own kind."

Matthew's jaw is wide open and he is scared.

Maiku eyes are hollow cause his shock is incomprehensible.

Reen(thinks to herself) : "So....I guess this is the extinction of the Feeders."

THE WHOLE FEEDER POPULATION WAS NOT ELIMINATED BY HUNGER

NOT BY A PREDATOR

NOT BY A NATURAL DISASTER

BUT.....BUT BY THEIR OWN.

The Bloom pulses louder in Momonato as he lunges at them.

To Be Continued....

---

Final words ;

"They had reached the end of the world."

"But what waited for them wasn't a king."

"It was a being who had chosen madness over mercy."

Narrator:

Chapter 24 — "The Bloom Beneath the Skin" — was not a story of battle. Not in the traditional sense. No armies clashed. No grand speeches were made. But what unfolded here was far more intimate, and far more terrifying: the unraveling of sanity, the suffocation of guilt, the tightening grip of something too ancient to name.

They entered the Hall of Voices expecting resistance — swords, creatures, traps. But instead, they found echoes. Echoes of every sin, every misstep, every haunting regret. The Bloom didn't attack them with claws — it tore into their truths. Whispered them. Screamed them. Made them feel.

And yet, they moved forward. Because turning back in this place means being devoured by your own story.

Maiku's flashback with Lorian was perhaps the last breath of warmth this chapter offered. It wasn't forgiveness. It wasn't peace. It was permission — to keep going, to keep others breathing. That's all anyone could ask for anymore.

Then came Irogi. Half-man. Half-thing. All fury. The ultimatum he gave was meant to break them — to turn them against one another. But Jakku… Jakku laughed. In a place where laughter shouldn't exist, he tore the moment apart with a relic from a corpse, a strange instinctual gamble — and for once, instinct beat fate.

But fate isn't done.

Because deeper still, in the rot and silence, they met what remained of Momonato. Not a tyrant. Not even a king. But a relic twisted by betrayal. Not by an enemy's hand — but by his own kind. He ended his people. Not out of hate. But out of mercy twisted into madness. A god who decided paradise was too heavy a burden.

And so, when they looked upon him — a mass of tongues, bloom, and something older still — they realized the horror wasn't just the Bloom. The horror was choice. His choice. What he'd become when left alone too long with power, grief, and silence.

The chapter ends, not with triumph, but with this truth:

They had reached the end of the world.

But what waited for them wasn't a king.

It was a being who had chosen madness over mercy.

And that… was always going to be worse