Tainted Field of Flowers

The world should've been waking with birdsong and golden light.

Instead, the sky bled gray, heavy with ash, as if mourning before we even understood why.

Lucia's arms clung tighter around my waist as our horse trotted beneath the clouded dawn. Her cheek pressed between my shoulder blades. Her breath was warm, trembling. We hadn't spoken in hours, not since we left the abandoned village, not since the Ironclad Tournament ended in blood and firelight. The hooves on the dirt road made a sound like a heartbeat struggling to keep rhythm, slow, irregular, failing.

We should've been worried about punishment. About being dragged by the collar into the throne room, covered in soot and shame. About the look on my father's face.

But those fears didn't matter anymore.

Because then we saw the smoke.

It rose in the distance beyond the ridge, thick and slow, like poison steeping into the heavens. Not the kind from hearth fires or cook pots. No. This was heavy. Black. Greasy. It clawed at the clouds.

I sat up straighter. Lucia stirred behind me.

"…That's not from chimneys," she said, her voice barely audible. "Joselyn… that's from homes."

The horse hesitated, ears back. I tugged the reins, trying to steady both it and myself. But my hands shook. The wind picked up, carrying a bitter scent I didn't recognize at first, acrid, metallic, and wrong.

Then we crested the ridge.

And Paradise died.

Flames devoured it all. The city, our city, was no longer recognizable. Houses collapsed inward like rotted fruit. Spires once gleaming with color now twisted and snapped under smoke and heat. The towers that crowned our kingdom cracked like bones underfoot. What had once been laughter and flowers and fountains was now burning refuse. A corpse with its beauty charred off.

"No," I whispered. "No, no—!"

My scream broke like glass. The horse galloped downhill, instinctively, and Lucia held me tighter as we plunged toward the inferno.

The closer we got, the harder it became to breathe. The air was thick with ash, as if the world itself had turned to dust and grief. My eyes burned. My lungs clawed at air that wasn't there. The smoke tasted like iron.

Then came the scent I did recognize.

Burnt flesh.

Hair.

Blood.

People.

When we reached the shattered outer wall, still unfinished from the renovations, I felt my stomach lurch. We dismounted in silence, both of us staggering.

They were everywhere.

Bodies lay across the dirt in unnatural poses. Soldiers melted into their armor. Masons and gardeners, men I'd passed every morning, blackened beyond recognition. Some had been cut down mid-fleeing, arms stretched behind them like wings. And some were smaller. Too small.

Children.

Lucia covered her mouth with both hands. Her sobs were tiny, breathless gasps like something sacred trying to escape.

I couldn't look away.

We walked in a daze past a row of still-burning carriages. A woman, crumpled on the steps of a bakery, twitched, still alive. I rushed to her side. Her skin had peeled away from her back. I knelt, trying not to gag.

"M-my baby…" she wheezed. "They burned… him… they—" Her voice cracked into wet coughing. "I tried to stop them… they laughed…"

Lucia sank beside us, holding her hand. "It's okay, it's okay, we're here…"

"They burned the nursery…" the woman whispered, eyes flicking wildly. "Said flowers should die in gardens, not castles. Said… said…"

Her head dropped before she could finish. Lucia didn't let go.

Another man lay propped against the shattered statue of Queen Felmirah. My late mother. A guard. One of the twins who used to sneak me sweets as a boy.

"…Prince Jo," he rasped, eyes half-closed.

I knelt. "G-Galen?"

"They knew where to strike…" His voice gurgled. Blood filled his mouth. "It wasn't… it wasn't just an attack. They knew. Every route. Every tunnel. No warning…"

His eyes stared through me, past me, like he was already leaving. "He tried to hold them back… your father… he… gods…"

He convulsed and was still.

I ran to try and help some others who were still clinging to life. At least one. Please gods above. Let me save at least one soul. Be it Calkaroth, Melothiel, or Mirelda!

"It was only five people…" a flower knight muttered. "They were… monsters… who bore the appearance of humans…" His last breath drew shortly after.

"Grk… Lucia, I can't…" I fell to my knees. Clutching myself.

Lucia ran to my side after closing the eyes of a child who laid on the hard, cold terrain only ten feet from me.

"Joselyn… I'm sorry…" Lucia whispered while tightly hugging me.

We passed a garden I'd visited yesterday. My hibiscus plants, my pride, were nothing but skeletal stems. Black and broken. I knelt and reached for one.

It turned to ash beneath my fingers.

***

"Do you know why flowers bloom, Joselyn?"

Father's voice again, floating from the past. I was seven. Sitting on his lap, a red rose in my hand.

"They bloom to remind the world that beauty is not permanent," he said. "Even in peace, life fades."

I frowned. "Then why bloom at all?"

"Because knowing it ends is what makes it beautiful," he told me. "You must learn to hold life gently. Even your own. Never too tightly. But never carelessly either… because even kingdoms fall."

I had forgotten. But now, I understood.

***

I ran.

I sprinted through the wreckage. Over fallen stone, through pools of blood. Lucia shouted behind me, but I couldn't stop.

"FATHER!" I screamed. "FATHER, PLEASE! WHERE ARE YOU!"

Smoke blurred everything, but I knew these roads. I knew the way. Past the ruined libraries. Past the orphanage where I used to leave toys. Past the old statue of the Flower Knight, shattered into rubble. Past everything. Every dead body. Every dead flower.

And then I saw it.

The palace.

Or what was left of it.

The front entrance had collapsed inward like a mouth that had screamed too hard. The golden stairwell was hidden beneath fire and stone. The painted ceilings were gone, only fractured beams remained, stabbing the sky like ribs torn from a carcass.

Bodies were strung across the courtyard like meat left for crows.

Some impaled.

Some nailed to walls.

The cousins I'd sparred with hours ago now lay in mangled piles. One had no legs. One had no face. A training sword was still in the hand of a girl whose torso was just a smear.

A kitchen maid lay near the fountain. The one who used to sing while peeling oranges for Lucia. Her limbs were bent the wrong way, throat open to the sky like she'd been silenced mid-song.

I dropped to my knees. Crawled.

I didn't realize I was sobbing. Didn't realize I was bleeding.

And then

I saw it.

The tower.

The very top of the palace.

There, hung like a grotesque banner, was my father.

Azralyn Alveretta, First King of Paradise.

His body was suspended between iron poles, chained and spread as if mocked. His skin had been flayed from his shoulders. His hands were nailed through the palms. His mouth was sewn shut. His throat cut so deep the bone showed. His golden crown, snapped in half, lay at the base of the tower, coated in ash.

He had been left as a message.

Lucia found me there.

She didn't speak. Didn't cry.

She just knelt beside me. Took my hand.

And together, we looked up at the ruin of the man who taught me to love life like a flower. To protect what grows. To never wield power for cruelty.

Now he was nothing but a corpse above a burning kingdom.

Paradise wasn't conquered.

It was butchered.

And that was the last day I ever craved battle.

And how the sight of blood… would only ever cause me to retch.