The Ashes That Bloomed (咲いた灰 / Saita Hai)

The fire had burned low, with embers pulsing like dying hearts. Hajime stared into the glow, his fists clenched on his knees. Rei leaned back against an oak, his eyes half-lidded but still listening. Izumi sat cross-legged, the white lotus in her palm reduced to faint ash that drifted between her fingers like snow.

She didn’t look at them. Her voice was quiet, but the forest carried it. “You asked how I got Eve. I told you about the night it happened, but that was not the beginning. That was the end of the girl I once was.”

Izumi inhaled deeply, and the air tasted of smoke and moss. “Let me take you further back. To the Verdant Veil before Eryndral rose. To a village called Kagerou, a place the maps forgot.”

The shadow of the Eidarus Tree did not reach this far. The soil was cracked, and the wells ran red with rust. Children played with sticks because there were no toys, while adults spoke in whispers because hope was a luxury they could not afford.

Izumi, six years old, sat in the dirt behind her family’s shack. Her knees were scabbed, and her hair was tangled with leaves. In her hands, she held a cracked clay pot containing one seed, one chance.

She pressed it into the dirt, covered it with trembling fingers, and whispered as if it could hear her. “Grow. Please. Just once.”

Her mother watched from the doorway, her skin pale and her eyes sunken. The Verdant Blight had taken her voice weeks ago, and now it was stealing her breath.

Izumi’s father knelt beside her, his callused hands closing over hers. “We will try again tomorrow, Rin.”

She didn’t answer. She just watered. Every drop she could draw from the well and every tear she shed when the well ran dry.

The village elder called it futile. “The Veil has abandoned us,” he spat. “The Eidarus Tree has forgotten us.”

But Izumi didn’t listen. She watered, waited, and believed.

Months passed, yet the seed never sprouted. Her mother grew weaker, but she lived on somehow. Izumi still whispered to her every night and continued to water the dirt every dawn.

A couple of years later, when Izumi was eight, the village had dwindled to just twenty souls. Her mother still breathed, shallow and ragged, but alive. Izumi remained steadfast, watering the seed and holding on to her belief.

Then the Crimson Legion came.

They didn’t send scouts. They sent fire and chaos.

The first torch struck the elder’s roof. He screamed as flames consumed his face. Children ran, some made it to the trees, but most did not.

Izumi’s father shoved her toward the forest. “Take your mother and go!”

He turned to fight. Izumi grabbed her mother’s cold, trembling hand and dragged her into the dark. They stumbled through smoke, taking ten steps, then fifteen.

Then a soldier in blood-red armor emerged from the flames. He saw the woman and laughed.

“Still breathing? Let’s fix that.”

He drove his sword through her mother’s chest and pinned her to the dirt like a butterfly.

Izumi screamed and dropped to her knees, reaching for her mother’s hand. It was already limp.

The soldier yanked the blade free, kicked the body aside, and grabbed Izumi by her hair. “Little weed. Time to pull you out,” he sneered as he raised his sword.

Suddenly, the earth cracked. It wasn't from anger but from memory. A thin, trembling root burst from the soil where Izumi had watered for two years. It wrapped around the soldier’s ankle.

With a swift movement, the root snapped, causing him to drop.

More roots followed, thick and ancient. They remembered every tear, every prayer, and every drop of blood now soaking the dirt. They rose from the ground.

Soldiers screamed as the roots dragged them under. One attempted to burn them, but the flames only fed the roots, making them taller, thicker, and sharper.

Izumi stood in the center, unmoving, with tears carving clean lines through the soot on her face. A voice, warm, ancient, and motherly, spoke inside her.

Little one… You watered ashes with hope. For two years. Every day. Even when no one else did, that is a soul the world cannot break.

Izumi looked up.

Eve stood in the flames, barefoot, hair like living moss, eyes like spring after winter. A crown of white lilies rested on her head. Her skin glowed faint green.

“I am Eve. The First Garden. The Will of Nature. You kept a seed alive in your heart when the world tried to kill it. Will you let me grow with you?”

Izumi’s voice was ash. “Will you… Bring her back?”

Eve knelt and touched the girl’s cheek.

“No. But I’ll make sure the world remembers her. Every root. Every flower. Every storm will carry her name.”

Izumi looked at her mother’s body, then at her father’s, now burning in the shack, then at the soldiers choking on their own blood as roots filled their lungs.

She nodded.

Eve smiled, a mix of sadness, softness, and fierceness. “Then rise, child, and let the earth sing her eulogy.”

Green light erupted. It wasn’t gentle. It was violent, like a forest splitting stone.

Izumi screamed as roots burst from her back, her arms, her soul. The ground shook. The Crimson squad vanished. They were crushed, buried, and erased.

When the light faded, Izumi stood in a crater of white lotuses. Eight years old. Eyes glowing emerald. Hands trembling.

The dirt where she’d watered for two years was now a garden, blooming in blood and ash.

She was broken and defeated, so she decided to do the only thing she knew how to do: water the garden.

Back to the present.

Izumi’s voice cracked on the last word. The ash in her palm drifted away.

Hajime’s fists were white. Rei’s eyes were closed. The fire popped once, twice.

Izumi looked up. Her smile was small, broken, and real.

“Eve didn’t choose me because I was special. She chose me because I refused to let hope die, even when I had every reason to.”

She stood, brushed ash from her robes, walked to the edge of the clearing, and pressed her palm to an oak.

“Tomorrow,” she said, voice steady, “we keep walking, and I'll keep watering.”

Rei opened his eyes, stood, and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“You’re not alone anymore, Rin.”

Hajime rose too, his voice rough.
“We’ll make sure you never get hurt again, I promise.”

Izumi laughed gratefully.
“Thank you, guys.”