When Old Ping died, the forest flew into a rage.

  The moon was full and high in the sky when the ground began to shake and ejected Willow from his slumber. His shelves of knicknacks clattered and shook, with a few of the pretty stones falling to the floor.

  The boy clutched his blanket and summoned his fiery friend from their place near his heart to light up the dark room.

  Eos looked around, confused and worried about the vibrations shaking the home. They sent as much comfort as they could to their human friend, and he sent as much as he could back through their link.

  Willow heard his father and aunt speaking in urgent tones, their emotions turbulent before his aunt rushed into his room and picked him up in a bundle. Eos coming with and floating nearby eager to be of use and shining as bright as they could comfortably sustain.

  “What’s happening?” The child asked Jieun as they moved through the home and headed outside, shadows flickering and lengthening as Eos’ light followed them through the building.

  His aunt was quiet and focused on the task of getting them to safety, so she ignored her nephew’s question. Though he could feel that whatever was happening had her scared and angry despite none of it showing in her expression.

  Rowan hopped down from the attic with Yew in tow, landing with surprising grace.

  “We don’t know what’s going on, but the plan is to gather in the communal building to wait out the quakes.” He hesitated after crossing the threshold to the outside. “Hopefully it’s nothing serious.” Bough trundled up to his master with as much urgency as the old turtle ever showed.

  Willow felt like the adults knew something they weren’t saying, but decided to trust their judgement.

  The small group made their way to the central building, using Eos and the light of the full moon to illuminate their path. They could see the silhouettes of the trees surrounding their clearing thrashing against the backdrop of the night sky.

  Willow had his senses spread out as far as he could, trying to get a better idea of the shape of the calamity that was threatening their home.

  It’s what allowed him to feel the Emerald Bloom moving beneath their feet.

  Before he could say anything, the monstrous flower erupted from the ground in front of them, startling the group. As it appeared, the shaking that had resounded throughout the clearing ceased and stillness returned to the night.

  The feeling of rot and corruption was pervasive in its being. Its titular bloom was reminiscent of a wilted viridian rose streaked with black putrescence. Its size so great that it eclipsed the light of the moon behind it.

  The beast king’s flower opened and lowered to the ground, depositing something wrapped in cloth at Rowan’s feet.

  Willow craned his neck to get a good look at what exactly the bundle was and froze.

  It was the rotting corpse of Old Ping.

  He felt no qi, no breath of life, even her core was completely bereft of the energy found in all things in this world. Her glassy eyes stared without seeing, almost accusatorily into the boy’s own.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Everything that was hers to give was taken by the Emerald Bloom, and Willow did too little to stop it.

  The flower ‘looked’ from the corpse to the group in front of it. Like a child asking a parent to fix its broken toy.

  Or replace it.

  Willow felt the way the rotten qi of the Bloom roiled, bubbled, and stirred. Aware of what it felt and what it wanted.

  It was sad.

  It was angry.

  It was hungry.

  The bloom’s focus landed on Jieun, roots and leaves twitching as a potential replacement is found.

  Before Willow could warn her he was tossed bodily onto the back of Bough, his Aunt already stepping on clouds with a brush in hand. Fleeing the roots that had suddenly burst from the earth in pursuit of their prey.

  Fog and a misting of rain started billowing out from her long sleeved dress, the child recognizing the qi as being from the spirit of hers he’d already met, Angaebi. The spirit of misty rain worked as hard as they could to obscure their mistress as they tried to evade capture.

  “Protect my children!” Rowan barked at Bough, directing them away from the growing conflict as he attempted to distract their once protector by trying to grapple the rotten roots.

  The old turtle trundled away as fast as they could. Child on their back, and teenage boy at his side. Both youths fearful of what could happen to the adults.

  Willow looked on as a malevolent spirit of sanguine ink appeared, wrapping themself around his aunt’s arm. Its skeletal form reminiscent of a snake with its fanged mouth biting down on the brush in her hand, dyeing the white bristles crimson at its touch.

  With a practiced swish of her wrist she wrote several words in the air, although at this distance Willow couldn't make out their meaning. All the while she dodged and weaved between the grasping skeletal roots and thorned vines that had escaped Rowan’s interference.

  Jieun finished her writing, both words and spirit pulsed, with concentrated ill intent being sent out to envelope the Emerald Bloom. As the curse started to settle into the beast king, the energy sustaining it began to immediately rot and wither.

  Meaning the attack did nothing but anger the flower demon further.

  Tired of Willow’s father’s attempts to hold it back, a slimy root covered in rotten qi grabbed hold of Rowan’s leg and casually tossed him off into the treeline and outside the child’s sensory range.

  “Da!” “No!”

  The two brothers cried out in unison, Bough joining in with a rumbling groan, but still urging the youths away from the fight, following their friend and master’s last command to keep his children safe.

  With no one interfering with the Bloom’s attempts to capture her, Jieun was quickly overwhelmed, trapped in a coffin of roots and vines. Her spirits escaped through the gaps in her prison and attempted a final doomed assault on the monster trying to enslave their partner.

  The misty rain spirit was dispersed by a single strike of a rotten root, their qi dissipating into the sky. Willow could feel the pain caused to his aunt by the forceful severing of a long held bond.

  The pain was doubled when her red ink spirit charged into the flower of the beast and detonated itself in a blast of malice. To the young boy’s senses they almost felt gleeful as they perished, doing one last act of harm before their demise.

  If the Emerald Bloom could scream or roar, Willow believed it would have in this moment.

  Instead it writhed and thrashed in silent rage, but still kept the cage it had Jieun trapped in relatively still and unharmed. Unwilling to damage its new prize.

  Eventually the demon ‘spat’ out a glob of crimson ink from its bloom, seeming to alleviate the majority of the pain caused by the spirit’s final attack.

  The beast, content with its successful hunt, began sinking into the earth, Jieun in tow.

  Willow jumped off of Bough and began running towards the sinking form of the Bloom, ignoring the cries of both his brother and the old turtle.

  By the time he got there it was too late, he could feel the demon retreating back to its den through the tunnel it made in the earth.

  He stared at the hole it left behind as rain began to fall.

  The rain mixed with his tears as he collapsed to his knees.

  Joke) Also I'm taking next week off to play Silksong so no chapters next week.(End of Joke)