Ethan drifted within a vast tapestry of silvery threads, each strand a fragment of memory woven deep in Lamphrey's mind. The dream-womb of her consciousness glimmered around him, a shifting corridor of half-lit forms and impressions. He felt both weightless and suffocated, as if the dream's essence pressed upon him, threatening to swallow him whole. Yet Lamphrey stood beside him, the high collars of her robe brushing against her cheeks, dark hair swirling about her face like ribbons caught in an otherworldly breeze. She took his hand, guiding him forward with a solemn determination. Whatever fear he felt was dwarfed by the urgent need to see what she was about to unveil. Here, in this place of nightmares and revelations, he would learn of Gyko, the Demon Flower.

They passed through a shimmering threshold, and suddenly a scene solidified around them. With disconcerting clarity, Ethan found himself in Sanctum, but it was Sanctum as it had once been—ancient ruins half-buried by ash and creeping vines. The land seemed tainted, yet beneath that dark veneer stirred a vibrant current of raw magic. It clung to his senses, making his skin prickle. He saw no immediate sign of life, save for a small circle of robed figures clustered around the base of a stone pillar.

Within that circle, at the very center, a tiny seed glowed with uncanny luminescence. It seemed no larger than a pebble. Its outer casing was a deep, bruised purple, shot through with veins of red. Lamphrey's voice, soft yet echoing like a guiding presence, reached Ethan. "We called her forth," she said. "We Oneiromancers, under the direction of Jun'Ei, the Prophet. We prayed to the old Archons. We offered them the last of our Sisterhood, the final flicker of our devotion. We offered them…everything."

Ethan watched, transfixed, as the circle of women intoned in a language he did not recognize. Their words rolled in waves, each syllable spiraling upward like a dark wisp of incense. Jun'Ei stood at its center, proud and regal like Sanctum's queen. She was younger, and far more powerful than the being Ethan had met in the realm of the City of Illusions.

At the spell's crescendo, the seed quivered, and an otherworldly light pulsed from its center. In that moment, Ethan's vision trembled. He felt Lamphrey tighten her grip on him. He did not want to look away, but the brilliance threatened to blind him. Then the radiance dissolved, leaving only the seed, which had grown faint roots that curled along the dusty stone.

No longer just a seed, it had begun to sprout. Thin, hungry tendrils twined in the shadows, trembling with what seemed like ravenous anticipation. And in the midst of the sprout's fragile leaves, Ethan saw a single eye slit open—an unsettling, deep crimson eye that gazed at the Sisterhood with embryonic awareness. The robed women bowed low, trembling, as if they knew they were in the presence of something both wondrous and terrible.

The memory's scenery swept forward. Ethan witnessed flashes of the Sisterhood's day-by-day nurturing of the newborn Archon. He saw them bring forth pale-skinned corpses, some still contorted in the aftermath of violent death. There were men and women, even the occasional child—those who had wandered too close to Sanctum's forbidden perimeter or had been captured on the outskirts of civilization. With grim reverence, the women lay the bodies at the root of the growing plant. It devoured them swiftly, liquefying flesh, drawing sustenance from bones until nothing remained but tattered clothes and a faint stench of decay.

Each time Gyko fed, she grew. At first, she resembled an enlarged plant with twisting vines, her single eye multiplied into a ring of eight eyes that glowed red in the darkness. But soon, arms of spindly stems began to form, and petals like razors wreathed a central bloom of unimaginable color—a color that seemed to shift between purple, black, and scarlet in the uncertain half-light. The Sisterhood chanted and sacrificed in daily rituals, and each day, the Archon's presence thrummed with greater power. The air around Sanctum turned thick, suffused with a noxious, pollen-like haze that Ethan could nearly taste. It burned at his nostrils even through the dream.

"We were so few then," Lamphrey said, her voice trembling with memory. "The Oneiromancers were hunted as all Hybrids were. We had lost nearly all of our order when the Moratavious fell. But the Prophet Jun'Ei believed Gyko would restore our strength, that she would bind the power of dream and flesh into one unstoppable bloom. We had no illusions that our path was righteous, but we believed in the cycle. We believed that new chaos had to be unleashed so that the world might reshape itself."

In effect, Ethan whispered. It could be said that you guys controlled Gyko more than she controlled you. This wasn't an Archon that came out of nowhere. It was one that you pulled, consciously, into your world. You…summoned her.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Lamphrey bowed her head. For the first time since he'd met her, Ethan saw her exhibit shame.

"They were all summoned, Archon Ethan. Even you."

He turned to her in the dream-state as if struck.

"Has your humanity on your world ever stood on the brink of complete annihilation?" she asked him. "Would you not feel the pangs of desperation in your heart as your species died? As your world died? Died – and was replaced by a realm ruled by those who sought your end? We gave each Archon exactly what they wished. In return, we placed our hopes in them."

Standing behind the sisterhood in the vision, Ethan watched the women bow as more corpses were dragged into the dank corridors of Sanctum. His stomach churned at the sight of the feeding, but he could not tear himself away. With each sacrifice, Gyko's trunk-like limbs swelled. Vines spread out in every direction, plunging into the soil and drawing up the land's hidden energies. The Archon's presence radiated, warping reality. Faint illusions flickered along Sanctum's walls, shifting patterns of blood and vine. The Sisterhood sang, half in triumph, half in madness.

But through this, Ethan's eyes wandered. He looked through the war-cries and bellows of hatred to the Seedling herself and saw a woman in the middle of a simple greenhouse tending some tomato plants. He saw her walk outside to a garden and pick some apples from an orchard there, straightening up her glasses as he inspected the fruit before taking a liberal bite and smiling.

He could feel the juice running down her lips. The girlish giggle as she wiped it.

She'd lived a simple life. A peaceful life. But he could also sense sorrow deep within her. All she had was her plants. She'd cultivated them in place of everything else – friends, family, lovers…she'd devoted herself to one thing in life and one thing alone. And now, as she grew into her twilight years, she was beginning to wither…

She wanted a place to belong…Ethan thought. She wanted a family…people that needed her…

Time advanced again, and Ethan found himself in a desolate plain beyond Sanctum, where caravans once traveled. He saw hooded acolytes from the Sisterhood loading wagons with sacks of grain, barrels of flour, and crates of produce. Yet hidden among them were round, purplish seeds—darkseed, they called it. These seeds glistened with an unholy sheen, each one brimming with the essence of the Demon Flower Archon. As the wagons rolled away, Ethan felt a wave of dread, knowing the seeds were destined for unsuspecting human settlements.

He followed Lamphrey through the dream-vision, watching a small hamlet in the foothills. People lined up at a makeshift stall to purchase fresh supplies from traveling merchants—unaware that they clutched the Sisterhood's darkseed in their eager hands. Days passed in an eerie montage as families cooked bread and stews from flour and grains tainted with Gyko's seeds. The first sign of change was an occasional cough or a subtle discoloration of the eyes. Then, after a few more meals, the transformations began. Skin hardened like bark or grew odd protrusions akin to thorny vines. Some victims lost their minds to bloodlust, their bodies contorting into twisted parodies of their former selves.

These were Gyko's monstrous spawn. Bolstered by the seed's corruption, they roamed the countryside, howling under the night sky, attacking man, beast, and anything that was not part of their new fungal brood. Whole villages fell under the onslaught, and in mere weeks, entire territories were overrun. Through the swirling dream-fog, Ethan saw the Sisterhood's strategy: with each place overrun, new seeds were sown in the carcasses of the fallen. Gyko's army multiplied exponentially, a plague that spread faster than any mortal kingdom could anticipate.

In a flash of haze, the setting changed to the forest of Westerweald, famous once for its tall, ancient oaks and the shimmering rivers that cut through the green – the very forest he'd emerged in. Now, that greenery was choked under twisting vines of brackish purple that pulsed with unnatural life. The noxious fumes swirling in the air blotted out the sun, casting the land in a dim twilight. Over this grotesque domain rose Gyko, now a colossal entity whose bloom crowned her like a hideous mockery of a queen's garland. Her petals unfurled, releasing spores that fell like poisonous snowflakes across miles of land.

Ethan's heart pounded as he saw entire battalions of men—knights, soldiers, mercenaries—charging into the blighted forest, hoping to cleanse it. But they were quickly overwhelmed by Gyko's minions. Misshapen humanoids with fungal appendages lunged from the undergrowth. Ferocious beasts, once wolves or bears, prowled with twisted limbs and flowers bursting from their ribcages. The desperate defenders found themselves outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and doomed to either immediate death or a slow transformation if they so much as breathed in too deeply of Gyko's spores.

Overhead, thunder crackled, though Ethan sensed it was no natural storm. Lightning forked across skies turned greenish-black with lingering toxins. On the horizon, fires raged, but their flames took on an odd hue, as though tinted by the alien presence that shrouded the land. Westerweald, once a proud frontier of fertile farmland and steadfast folk, was reduced to a battlefield of writhing nightmares.

Lamphrey's voice broke through Ethan's mounting horror. "And so it was, as in the days of Karfangg. The darkness stretched across the world. The Lightborn had long been absent, wandering in far corners or consumed in previous struggles. This was an era of hopelessness. We believed that we were witnessing the final triumph of our kind. That we were returning the world to what it once was."

A heavy silence fell before she added, "But Kaedmon's Law does not care what anyone believes…"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.