When the Seed Cracks
The birds sang the same song.
The light filtered through the canopy in the same golden ribbons.
The moss pressed against his back with the same softness it always had.
Aoto didn't move.
He lay there, staring up at the trees that never aged, at the clouds that never drifted, listening to a wind that carried no weight. He could name every sound now. Every chirp, every flutter. He could map this loop by heartbeat. He no longer needed his eyes.
He blinked anyway. Once. Slowly.
Then whispered:
"Is this what it means to die and not know it?"
No one answered.
Of course not.
The biome pulsed gently around him, like a lung that no longer cared what it was breathing.
He stood eventually. Not because he wanted to, but because his body did. Habit, maybe. Or muscle memory. Or whatever was left of will after it had been drowned.
His steps had no purpose. He traced the old path again. He didn't mark it. Didn't count.
There was nothing left to measure.
No resistance. No rebellion.
He simply walked.
Through the forest that watched him.
Through the garden that never let him rot.
Through the illusion that asked him to stay still and call it paradise.
He found the clearing like always.
It didn't matter where he turned.
The loop always brought him back here.
A circle of quiet. A pool of moss. A perfect stage.
Aoto dropped to his knees in the center of it.
Let his hands fall limp to his sides.
And laughed.
Not loudly. Not madly.
Just… hollow.
Like an old bell ringing without wind.
"I give up," he said.
The biome shivered, faintly, like it had been waiting to hear those words.
"I'm done."
His voice cracked.
"Just—let me be nothing."
And then, something happened.
It wasn't a light.
It wasn't a sound.
It was a presence—pulling itself upward from inside his chest.
A breath he hadn't taken. A pulse that didn't belong to him.
His spine straightened.
His shoulders rolled back.
His hands opened, fingers loose, relaxed.
He rose—not like standing, but like levitating into place. Effortless. Fluid.
The air around him stilled.
Not a leaf moved.
Not a sound dared echo.
His body shimmered—soft, white, like memory woven into fabric.
He didn't glow.
He just was.
And the garden recognized him.
And it was afraid.
Roots beneath the earth twisted backward.Trees turned their leaves down.The light dimmed—not into night, but into silence.
Even the moss shrank.
Aoto—no, the figure that wore Aoto's form—stood in absolute stillness.
A perfect, devastating calm.
Like the ghost of something too old to remember.
And then—she came.
The Queen did not grow in from the bark.
She did not descend on flowers or arrive with bloom and beauty.
She ripped into the loop, her form jolting into existence with a sound like a branch breaking under strain.
She was not serene.
She was not curious.
She was afraid.
Her steps faltered as she approached him.
She stopped three paces away.
Eyes wide. Unblinking.
And whispered, not to Aoto, but to herself—
"…it still echoes."
She stared at his form.
Not Aoto's—but the white-cloaked stillness, the echo of something long buried.
Aoto didn't move.
Couldn't move.
He wasn't in his body.
Not fully.
His thoughts floated somewhere behind his eyes, muffled, like underwater screams.
And then—
The form cracked.
Aoto gasped.
Dropped.
His knees slammed into the moss.
His hands caught dirt.
He coughed, shaking, hair brushing over his eyes.
White.
The ends were white.
Not silver, not bleached.
Just… white. Pure. Soft. Ancient.
The shimmer was gone.
The stillness broken.
And yet, something lingered in the air—a scent of old metal and dust and forgotten winter.
He looked up at the Queen.
Her expression was unreadable now. Composed again. But cold.
She raised one hand.
And the forest collapsed.
The trees fell inward.
The light folded.
The sky peeled into nothing.
The moss turned to sand.
And the loop was gone.
Aoto lay on smooth stone, surrounded by darkness.
Above him, a ceiling of roots.
Below, damp stone and his trembling breath.
He turned onto his side. His body ached again. Time had returned.
He was real.
Real enough to hurt.
The Queen stood at the far end of the chamber. Silent.
Back turned.
One hand resting on a wall of veins pulsing with slow green light.
She did not look at him when she spoke.
Her voice was lower now. Measured.
But not distant.
"The trial is over."
"You cracked."
She stepped closer. Her bare feet silent against the root-bound floor.
"I thought you were stubborn."
"But no. You were hiding something."
She paused beside him.
Looked down.
Eyes sharp as thorns.
"Not power. Not blood."
"A shape. A resonance."
"Something I haven't seen since…"
A pause.
Not fear. Not awe.
Just remembrance.
She stepped back.
"Rest while you can."
"What's inside you might not sleep much longer."
She vanished into the wall of roots.
And Aoto lay alone.
Hair pale.
Body shaking.
Head full of something he couldn't name—
but that remembered him perfectly.