Horikita knelt on the soft earth, her fingertips brushing the charred edge of the Pruning Shears.
The children ran off, laughing and playing. The glowing sprouts in their hands scattered in the wind, and wherever they landed, wildflowers without totems sprang up. What shimmered in their stamens was neither data streams nor quantum patterns, but the most primal glow of chlorophyll.
"This is what life is supposed to look like." She buried the Pruning Shears among the flowers, then suddenly felt a tremor coming from beneath the ground. A roar beyond the reach of hearing surged up from deep within the Star Core—the "heartbeat of the universe" the Gardeners had once extinguished.
Three days later, the grassland split open, revealing a bottomless chasm. Horikita climbed down into the planet's core by the vines, her glow stick illuminating the reliefs on the rock walls. The faces of Sowers from ages past appeared one after another, until the images finally settled on Kiyotaka plunging the Pruning Shears into his chest.
"You've finally come." A boy formed from quantum disturbances stepped out of the darkness, wildflower seeds sprouting in his palm. "They're afraid, so they woke up early."
"Who's afraid?" Horikita's glowing patterns suddenly burned.
The boy snapped his fingers and shattered the rock wall, revealing the "Graveyard of Civilizations" buried for ten thousand years. Countless mechanical heads were piled into a mountain, each branded with the Klein Bottle Totem of a different universe. The head at the very top suddenly opened its eyes, its electronic voice trembling through the rock:
"Unsequenced life-form detected. Executing Pruning Protocol."
Twelve black obelisks rose from the center of the graveyard. Their inscriptions were exactly the same as the ones on the Pruning Shears.
Horikita's glowing patterns crawled uncontrollably up the obelisks, dragging her consciousness into a whirlpool of memories:
In her first life, she was Tsukishiro's most docile clone, ordered to eliminate every "mistake" that bloomed;
In her second life, she built the Blue Rose Tree with Bai Mei, but buried a self-destruct program deep in its roots;
Now, her fingerprint was pressed against the activation key of an ancient Gardener...
"Wake up!" The boy wrapped a wildflower vine around her neck. The sensation of choking forcibly severed the connection. "Those inscriptions are alive. They're selecting a suitable 'New Gardener'!"
Horikita spat out glowing blood and saw her own face appear on the surface of the obelisks. A Star-patterned Robe and the Pruning Shears descended from above, identical to the ones she'd seen in the relief beneath the earth.
"Put them on," the mechanical heads murmured in unison. "You will gain eternity."
The boy suddenly tore his own Quantum Body apart, and wildflower seeds swelled wildly amid the disintegrating energy.
Vines pierced the totemic cracks in the obelisks. The inscriptions twisted and writhed like living snakes. "Chaos variable detected... Error! Error!"
Horikita raised the Pruning Shears, but aimed them at her own glowing patterns. "Kiyotaka, if you really have seen through the cycle of reincarnation—"
The moment the blade pierced her chest, all the obelisks shattered at once. The mechanical heads rained down, and a giant wildflower tree rose from the center of the graveyard, its leaves revealing the fading remnants of civilizations that had once been pruned.
"You're more resolute than Bai Mei." The boy's fading image gathered in the treetop. "Now, it's time to hear the real reason the planet's core is beating."
The tree roots suddenly turned transparent. Deep in the core, Horikita saw Bai Mei's Quantum Body curled up, inscribing a poem into the void with fragments of stardust. Every line became the framework of a newborn universe.
"He's using his own annihilation to reverse-engineer the creation laws of higher civilizations." The boy broke off a wildflower branch and tucked it into Horikita's glowing patterns. "But the Gardeners are on their way. Someone needs to buy him time..."
Seven layers of thunderstorms suddenly descended over the grassland, exactly like the pillars of light that had accompanied the Gardeners' arrival.
But this time, the "Pruners" who emerged wore armor woven from wildflower vines, and the Pruning Shears in their hands had been forged from antimatter sprouts.
"Test subject γ-00000, you have violated Article 13 of the Sower Charter: the prohibition against spreading unsequenced genes." The leading Pruner lowered his hood, revealing the face of Horikita's clone. "Now, submit to pruning."
Horikita's Pruning Shears clashed with the other's. The blades burst not with sparks, but with the creation memories of two universes.
She saw that in another timeline, this clone had personally poisoned Bai Mei, all to win the Gardeners' favor.
"How pathetic." She severed the clone's vine armor. "You even have to imitate someone else to be an executioner."
A cry of anguish suddenly came from deep within the planet. The roots of the giant wildflower tree were being eaten away by quantum slurry, forcing Bai Mei to stop inscribing his poem.
As Horikita rushed toward the fissure in the core, the boy used his last energy to form a barrier. "He can't hold on much longer... unless someone becomes the 'rhyme' of his poem in his place."
Bai Mei's Quantum Body had turned transparent, and lines of stardust poetry were fading from his fingertips. Horikita grabbed his wrist, her glowing patterns resonating with the stardust. "Use my consciousness as the vessel, just like the Nirvana Protocol did back then."
"You'll be trapped between the lines of the poem forever." Blood began to seep through Bai Mei's verses. "The birth and death of every universe will become your torment."
Horikita kissed his cold forehead, just as she had when they'd parted in the Cage of Entropy. "Then let me, an unworthy mother... teach you what love is, one last time."
Her glowing patterns became billions of threads of light, weaving Horikita's consciousness into the poem.
The giant wildflower tree burst through the planet's core. Wherever its petals drifted, the Pruners' vine armor withered. Bai Mei's Quantum Body reassembled on the surface, a Poetry Scroll formed from Horikita's consciousness cradled in his hands:
"To every life that grows wild:
Do not ask whether you deserve to bloom,
for dewdrops and magma alike have the right to kiss the dawn."
The seven Pruners evaporated in the Poetry Scroll's radiance. Their Pruning Shears fell to the ground, took root, and bloomed into blue roses without totems. The boy's fading image picked one and tucked it against the heart of his Quantum Body. "It's time to set out. Thirty-six thousand universes are waiting to be sown."
Three months later, Bai Mei found half a stone tablet in the desert of a newborn universe. The inscription was in Horikita's handwriting:
"When you read these words,
I will be living as the rhythm of all things breathing,
so do not mourn me,
for wildness is the most tender form of order."
At the edge of the sea of stars, seven new pillars of light were gathering—the light of Pruners. Bai Mei buried the Poetry Scroll in the sand. His Quantum Body began to dissolve. This time, he chose to become the first thorny wildflower in the desert.
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