Chapter Two: A Flower for the Lost
1939 Words
I didn’t go home that night.
Instead, I sat in the middle of Saint Alura’s cemetery, knees drawn to my chest, shivering under a sky smeared with moonlight and smoke. The graves were silent. The statues of angels, weeping and chipped, stared down at me like they knew things I didn’t.
I didn’t pray. I hadn’t done that in years.
But I did whisper Lumi’s name.
Over and over, like maybe if I said it enough times, the wind would carry it through the veil and bring her back.
Lumi.
God, I missed her. Her laugh. Her stubbornness. The way she could make a joke out of anything, even after Mom and Dad died. Even when Rae tried too hard and the world tried too little. We were the same face split in two mirrors, but she always smiled louder, shone brighter.
And now there was a hollow space in me shaped exactly like her.
I leaned back against a tombstone, fingers still clutching the brittle rose Thorne had given me. The last petal had fallen somewhere in my escape. I felt like that petal — fallen, fragile, and not sure where I belonged anymore.
Somewhere between a memory and a mistake.
---
A soft crunch behind me made every muscle in my body go rigid.
I turned slowly.
Just a bird.
A crow, black as night, hopping between graves like it owned the place.
It tilted its head at me.
“Not in the mood,” I muttered.
It cawed once, as if insulted, then flew off.
Good. I didn’t need more omens.
I already had too many.
---
By morning, I was soaked in dew and stiff from the cold. A kind woman from the chapel found me and gave me tea without asking questions. She assumed I’d had a fight with someone. That I’d run away.
She wasn’t wrong. Just… not for the reasons she thought.
I finally walked home around 7 a.m., half expecting Rae to be pacing the porch with her arms crossed and a list of very loud, very emotional things to say.
But she wasn’t there.
She wasn’t anywhere.
The house was quiet. Too quiet.
I stepped inside.
“Rae?” I called out.
No answer.
The kettle was cold. Her keys were still on the counter.
I went to her room. The bed was untouched. Neat. Like it hadn’t been slept in.
Dread coiled in my stomach.
Then I saw it.
A single petal.
Black.
Right on her pillow.
---
I ran.
Again.
Not to the graveyard this time.
To the only place I could think of.
Back to the woods.
Back to the place where the gate had been.
But it was gone.
The trees stood where I remembered, still twisted and gnarled, but the pool of water was dry, the clearing empty. No shimmer. No sound. No ripple in the air.
No Thorne.
“Damn it!” I shouted.
A flock of birds took off from the canopy above.
I turned in circles. “Thorne!”
Nothing.
I kicked a rock, then immediately regretted it.
Pain bloomed in my toe, and I sat down hard in the dirt, growling at nothing.
“What the hell am I supposed to do now?” I whispered.
“Good question.”
I jumped to my feet.
Thorne stepped out from behind a tree, as if he’d just been waiting for the right dramatic moment.
“Where have you been?” I hissed.
“Watching.”
“Watching what?”
“You,” he said simply. “You ran last night. Smart.”
“You saw the echo?”
He nodded.
“You could’ve helped!”
“I did. You’re alive, aren’t you?”
My jaw clenched.
“And Rae?” I asked.
His expression darkened. “She’s been marked.”
“What does that mean?”
“She’s not gone yet. But she will be. Unless you get her back.”
“Then take me to her!”
“I can’t.”
“Stop saying that!”
“Iris.” Thorne’s voice dropped. “This isn’t like finding a lost phone. She’s in the Outer Bloom now. I can’t enter there without the bond.”
“Then bond with me. Or whatever it is.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because bonding is a choice. A real one. A connection. Not desperation.”
I stepped closer. “Then choose me.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“Say her name,” he said.
“What?”
“Rae’s full name. Say it. Mean it.”
“Rae Elira Vale.”
He nodded. “Again.”
“Rae Elira Vale.”
The air grew cold.
“Once more.”
“Rae. Elira. Vale.”
The wind stopped.
The trees stilled.
A sound, faint and sorrowful, rose from the earth itself.
Help me.
---
“Welcome to the Bloom,” Thorne whispered.
He took my hand.
The world tore in half.
The moment my hand touched his, it felt like being pulled through water and light all at once. The forest around us shattered — not like breaking glass, but like peeling paint flaking off reality itself. The colors warped. The trees folded inward like paper turning to ash.
And then we were somewhere else.
The ground beneath me wasn’t ground at all.
It was made of petals.
A thousand blood-colored blossoms layered into a path that stretched in all directions. Some fluttered beneath my shoes like dying butterflies. The air smelled of smoke and roses. The sky above us was a strange reddish-black, like the sun had forgotten to rise.
“What is this place?” I whispered.
Thorne’s voice was quiet. “This is the Inner Bloom. The part of the echo realm closest to our world.”
The world pulsed, like a heartbeat I couldn’t hear but could somehow feel in my teeth.
“This is where the lost go,” he added. “Before they forget themselves.”
“And Rae’s here?”
He nodded. “Not for long. The longer someone stays, the more they forget who they were. Why they mattered.”
I started walking without waiting.
“Iris,” he warned.
But I didn’t stop.
Because somewhere in this godforsaken garden, my aunt was trapped, and I wasn’t about to let her rot while we admired the scenery.
---
We followed the petal path for what felt like hours. The sky never changed, and the landscape bent subtly when we weren’t looking. Shadows moved in the corner of my vision — too quick to catch, too quiet to trace. The further we went, the stranger it became.
We passed a tree with hundreds of shoes hanging from its branches. Small ones. Children's. All different sizes.
Another stretch of path led us through a garden where every flower had human teeth instead of petals.
I stopped in front of one.
It whispered something in Lumi’s voice.
I kept walking.
---
“How do we find her?” I asked.
“She’ll be somewhere she felt unresolved,” Thorne said. “Somewhere filled with grief.”
“Great. That narrows it down to literally every memory.”
He offered a half-smile. “You’re not wrong.”
Eventually, we reached a fork in the path.
One side led to a crumbling house with flickering lights in the windows — shaped like our old family home.
The other side spiraled downward into a well of mist and cracked music.
I pointed to the house. “That wasn’t there before, was it?”
“No,” he said.
“Then that’s it.”
I stepped forward, but Thorne grabbed my wrist. “Echoes are strongest in memories. If you go in alone—”
“I’m not going in alone,” I said. “You’re coming too.”
He hesitated.
Then nodded.
We stepped into the house.
---
Inside, it was exactly like I remembered.
Down to the ticking of the old kitchen clock and the smell of Rae’s lavender tea. The wallpaper was peeling just like in real life. One of Lumi’s drawings still hung crooked on the fridge. My breath caught.
This was wrong.
Too real. Too complete.
“Iris…”
The voice floated down the hallway.
I ran toward it.
A figure stood in the doorway of Rae’s bedroom.
She looked exactly like I remembered her — hair pinned back, worry lines sharp around her mouth.
But when she turned, her eyes were black. Not empty — infested.
I stepped back.
“That’s not her.”
“I know,” Thorne said. “It’s an echo. A mimic. A trap.”
“How do I find the real one?”
“You listen,” he whispered.
“To what?”
“To your fear.”
The echo-Rae opened her mouth. From it spilled a thick stream of thorns, crawling across the floor toward us.
Thorne shoved me back. “Move!”
We ran.
Down the hallway. Into the living room. Through the fireplace.
And just like that—
We were somewhere else.
---
Now we stood on a frozen lake, the ice cracked with red veins. At the center, a single chair. Rae sat in it, hands folded, eyes empty.
I sprinted.
She didn’t react.
“Rae!” I called.
Her head lifted — barely.
But behind her, the ice began to shift.
A shape moved beneath it. Huge. Unnatural. With too many limbs.
“She’s not alone,” Thorne said grimly. “This is a nesting place.”
“What does that mean?”
“It feeds on the grief of the trapped. Grows inside them.”
“Then help me get her out!”
“I can’t go further. Not bonded. The ice isn’t real. It’s memory. Only you can walk it.”
I looked down at the cracks. At the red lines crawling toward me like veins under skin.
One wrong step and I’d be swallowed.
But Rae was staring now. Eyes slowly clearing. Lips moving.
“Iris?” she said. “Is that you?”
“I’m here.”
Tears burned my throat.
“Where am I?”
“You’re stuck, Rae. You’re stuck and I’m going to get you out.”
I stepped onto the ice.
It groaned beneath my foot.
I held my breath.
Then another step.
And another.
Behind Rae, the shadow under the ice began to rise.
“Hurry!” Thorne shouted.
I ran the last ten steps.
Threw my arms around her.
The thing beneath the ice struck upward — a claw like bone crashing through the surface.
But I had Rae.
And she remembered me.
That was enough.
---
The world shattered again.
We were back in the woods.
Rae collapsed into the mud beside me, gasping like she’d been held underwater.
Thorne stood a few feet away, silent.
I cradled her head, shaking. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”
She blinked slowly. “I… was somewhere. You were little. And I was tucking you in.”
I nodded. “That wasn’t real.”
She sobbed. “It felt real.”
I held her tighter. “I know.”
Thorne knelt beside us. “She’ll sleep for a while. She’ll be confused when she wakes.”
“But she’s safe?”
He nodded.
I looked at him. Really looked.
“Thank you.”
He met my eyes. “Don’t thank me yet.”
“Why not?”
He glanced up at the trees.
Because something else had come through.
And it was still watching us.
- Writer
