The words “I am Sakurabara” did not echo as they should have in the vast hall.
Instead, they sank directly into the fabric of reality, rewriting it from the ground up.
In one heartbeat, they were standing on the cold, black marble of the temple, surrounded by towering columns.
In the next; the floor vanished.
It didn’t collapse; it didn’t shatter.
It simply ceased to be stone, instantly replaced by a tangled, pulsating mass of living roots and damp, black soil.
The vaulted ceiling, which a second prior had disappeared into the gloom, melted away like smoke.
The architecture, the walls, the large iron doors; all of it was revealed to be a mere illusion, a grand curtain that had just violently dropped.
The crew froze.
Their eyes darted wildly, desperately seeking a point of reference, but found nothing.
They were no longer inside a building.
They were standing in the dead center of an ocean.
It was an endless sea of blood-red roses.
The bushes, growing waist-high, stretched in every conceivable direction as far as the eye could see, bleeding together at the horizon into a single, uninterrupted line of deep crimson.
There were no mountains, no forests, no fortified walls of Silent Bliss.
There were only roses.
Millions upon millions of roses, bristling with gleaming golden thorns.
Above their heads, there was no sun, no moon, and no stars.
The sky was a pitch-black void.
Yet this wasn’t the darkness of a night sky; it was the profound blackness of the abyss, a velvety nothingness that seemed to actively devour both sound and thought.
The sole source of illumination was Sakurabara herself, along with a strange, eerie luminescence radiating from the tightly closed rosebuds.
“Keelhaul me sideways!
Where did the bloody roof go?!” Figlin shrieked, clamping both hands down on his tricorne hat as if terrified gravity was about to give out.
He spun in a frantic circle, his land-sickness flaring violently.
“Where’s North?!
There are no damn stars!
How am I supposed to navigate on this…
this…
sea of cursed weeds?!”
Lengos raised his bastard sword, but his stance was noticeably unsteady.
There were no walls to guard his back.
There were no chokepoints to hold.
There was only horrifying infinity.
“It’s an illusion…” he growled, though he didn’t believe it for a second.
The scent of the roses was far too real; stifling, heavy, and coating the inside of their lungs like a thick, sickly syrup.
Sakurabara was no longer standing in front of them.
She was everywhere at once.
She began to stroll casually among the Outcasts, and the thorny bushes actively parted before her bare feet, as if bowing in reverence.
Her movements were hypnotic.
She didn’t walk like a seasoned warrior, nor did she march like a queen.
She moved with the fluid grace of a serpent and the precision of a master dancer, every subtle sway of her hips seemingly sending a tremor deep into the soil.
She glided up to Perval.
The monk tensed his muscles, fully prepared to strike, but he didn’t throw the punch.
Something completely paralyzed him.
Sakurabara stepped so close that her breasts were nearly brushing against his bare torso.
She was tall, statuesque.
She raised a delicate hand, the long nails capped in pure gold, and slowly, almost affectionately, traced the pad of her finger along one of the deep, jagged scars cutting across his chest.
Her touch wasn’t cold.
It was searing hot.
Perval felt the skin blister beneath her fingertip, a violent shiver of mingled agony and ecstasy shooting straight down his spine.
“So much history violently carved into flesh…” she murmured, staring deeply into his eyes.
Her voice was like warm honey poured directly into the ear.
“Every single scar is a monument to pain.
To struggle.
To endless noise.
Aren’t you entirely exhausted from being a shield, little monk?
Doesn’t this powerful body finally yearn to just…
collapse onto a soft bed of petals and completely forget its duty?”
He swallowed hard, unable to tear his eyes away from her lips.
His fists clenched, but he didn’t strike.
His breathing grew shallow.
“I…
I don’t tire out that easily,” he rasped, though it sounded entirely unconvincing.
Sakurabara smiled and, without turning her head, glided past him, her hip lightly brushing against his thigh.
She came to a halt before Duria.
The vampire, usually brimming with confidence and mockery, took half a step back, her hand dropping instinctively to the hilt of her katana.
Her predatory instincts screamed a single, deafening word: Death.
The demoness leaned in close.
The fragrance radiating from her; a heady concoction of exotic blossoms, fresh blood, and smoldering sulfur; was nearly intoxicating to the vampire.
“Kawaii (Cute),” Sakurabara whispered, mocking Duria’s earlier tone.
Her hand hovered near the assassin’s cheek without actually touching it, yet the mere proximity made the vampire’s skin prickle with static.
“A small, predatory flower that fancies itself armed with thorns.
But your blades are forged of mere steel, my dear.
Mine are forged of pure desire.
How do you propose to cut something that possesses no flesh, but only an unyielding will?”
Duria hissed, baring her fangs, but her hand on the hilt visibly trembled.
“Urusai!
(Shut up!)…” she snapped, but she did not strike.
She felt as though every single movement within this impossible space had already been foreseen and calculated.
Sakurabara laughed softly and shifted her steps toward Zedora.
The barbarian was still panting from her frenzy, her axes dripping with the Custodian’s gore.
“And you…” The demoness circled her slowly, her long hair brushing against the warrior’s shoulders.
“So much anger.
So much fire.
You burn so brightly you are simply consuming yourself from the inside out.
I watched you fight.
That wasn’t courage.
That was sheer desperation.
What is it you seek in this endless slaughter, child?
Validation?
Or perhaps…
the quiet you can never seem to find inside your own head?”
Zedora snarled, lashing out with a wild axe swing, but Sakurabara was faster; she didn’t even bother to dodge, simply manifesting in a different spot as if the geometry of space had folded around her.
The barbarian struck empty air, stumbling and losing her footing on the yielding soil.
Finally, Sakurabara stood before Lengos.
The paladin stepped in front of Neira to shield her, but within this infinite garden, the very concept of “shielding” lost all meaning.
The enemy was everywhere at once.
“Step aside, little knight,” she said, her voice dropping into a register that hardened, though it still dripped with sensuality.
“Your shield is battered.
Your sacred code is cracked.
You protect her because you assume she is a helpless victim.
But what if she has no desire to be protected at all?”
Sakurabara didn’t wait for an answer.
She walked straight through him; literally.
The knight felt as though a freezing gale had rushed through his chest, stopping his heart for a terrifying fraction of a second.
He staggered and dropped to one knee, gasping for air.
The demoness stood face-to-face with Neira.
Two beings; one colossal, radiating raw eroticism and absolute dominion; the other small, terrified, yet sharing the exact same demonic bloodline.
Sakurabara cupped Neira’s face in both hands.
The gesture was intensely intimate, entirely possessive.
“Look at this place, sister,” she whispered, her voice echoing directly inside the priestess’s mind.
“There is no pain here.
No shame.
No judgment.
There is only…
wanting.
Why do you walk alongside them?
With these dirty, broken creatures who only ever take, inflict wounds, and die?”
Yerga, standing a short distance away in the background, watched the scene with detached fascination while idly toying with her pendant.
She could acutely sense that within this warped reality, summoning Bregg was entirely out of the question.
Her skeletal cat was desperately trying to dig a hole in the dirt, only to unearth a thick root that instantly coiled around its bony paw.
“I must admit,” Yerga called out, casually interrupting the intimate moment.
“The interior design is a bit monotonous, but it certainly has atmosphere.
However, that blackness up above…
a trifle suffocating, wouldn’t you say?
It desperately lacks…” she made a fluid, dismissive gesture in the air”…a point of reference.
Something to give it actual meaning.”
Sakurabara turned her head toward Yerga.
Her eyes blazed with a fierce, inner fire.
“I am the meaning,” she stated.
And in that exact instant, the roses around them began to grow.
Thick vines shot upward, wrapping around the companions’ legs, slithering up their thighs; not to inflict wounds, but to bind their movements with an embrace so suffocatingly tight it mirrored the grip of a desperate lover.
“Welcome to my heart,” she finished smoothly.
“Here, your will is worth no more than dust scattered on the wind.”
Sakurabara still held Neira’s face within her palms.
Her touch was searingly hot, blistering the skin, yet the priestess was completely paralyzed, unable to pull away.
The demoness leaned in so close their foreheads pressed together.
The priestess’s violet braids mingled directly with the cascading dual-toned locks of the Lady of the Garden.
Her lips parted near Neira’s ear, but no human sound issued from the demoness’s throat.
It was no word belonging to any known lexicon; neither the Common tongue, nor the harsh cadence of the demonic planes, nor the ancient whispers of dragons.
It sounded like a seed cracking open under immense pressure, the rushed roaring of blood in a rushing vein, and the dying shriek of a newly born star.
To the others, it was silence.
To Neira, it was a waking vision.
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