The glass container was filled with medicinal fluid, and tubes were connected all over Afterglow's body. The doctors and Black Man-Bear said this was a necessary part of saving Mother.
His tiny body soaked in the viscous fluid as Afterglow looked through the glass at the world outside.
It was hideous. The doctors wore pristine white coats, but thin, withered black arms sprouted beneath their necks and elbows. Enormous snail shells weighed down their backs, engraved with the faces of people who had died horrific deaths.
Black Man-Bear's appearance had changed drastically too. He no longer looked remotely human, resembling an enormous bear walking upright. Malice drifted from his entire body, as though his skin were covered in long black fur. His eyes were sunken, greed and longing lurking in his black pupils, as if he might seize someone and devour them at any moment.
Looking farther out, he saw enormous black rootlets piercing through a world blurred by the glass. Tiny, writhing tentacles were everywhere. Some had eyeballs growing at their tips, eyes utterly unlike a human's, dark and fathomless, colder than a venomous snake's.
When he looked down at his own body, Afterglow could clearly feel the Fate Flowers drawing something out of him. Seeds took root and sprouted in his flesh, pushing through his skin.
The so-called Fate Flowers had nothing to do with flowers, either. At least in Afterglow's eyes, they were indistinct mouths, growing by devouring goodwill. Yet if their supply of positive emotions stopped, they would quickly wither.
Those strange patterns... I think I've seen them on the Shrine at the edge of the sky. Are these Fate Flowers fragments shaken loose from that Shrine, memories forgotten by a god?
More tubes took root in his body. Images of Mother kept surfacing in Afterglow's