Back on the bridge of the "Odyssey," a new set of alarms began to scream. But these were not the loud, frantic alarms of an incoming attack. These were the confused, worried beeps of a system that was seeing something impossible.

The brilliant, blue-white beam of energy that had shot out from the Gardener's Avatar had arrived. But it didn't hit their shields with a crash. It didn't burn through their hull.

It just… passed right through.

Like a ghost walking through a wall, the beam of pure light slid silently through the ship's defenses, through the thick metal of its hull, and into the heart of the vessel. It was not an explosion. It was a whisper.

"What was that?" Seraphina cried, her hands gripping her console. "What did it do?"

Zara was staring at her own screen, her eyes wide with a look of pure, scientific disbelief. Her scanners were trying to analyze the beam, but the data was just a stream of nonsense.

"It's… not energy," she said, her voice a strange mix of confusion and awe. "Not in the way we understand it. It's… information. It's pure data. A stream of it so dense, so complex… it's like trying to pour the entire internet through a garden hose. In a single second."

The beam wasn't a weapon meant to destroy the ship. It was a cable, a direct connection, aimed at one specific person who wasn't even on board.

The crew could only watch, their hearts pounding in their chests. They were completely helpless. They couldn't shoot the beam. They couldn't block it. They could only watch as their friend, light-years away in a room full of gods, was hit by an attack they couldn't even begin to understand.

In the timeless, gray antechamber of the Conclave, the beam arrived.

Ryan cried out, a sound that was half gasp, half groan, and he stumbled, falling to one knee. His whole body tensed, his fists clenched, his jaw tight.

It wasn't a feeling of pain. It was a feeling of… too much.

His eyes, which were usually filled with a soft, starlike light, suddenly blazed with a blinding, blue-white Precursor glow. Strange, geometric patterns of light, like lines of glowing, alien code, began to race across his skin, flowing from his head down his arms and chest.

He felt as if a thousand libraries, each one containing the entire history and operating manual of the universe, were being force-fed into his brain through a fire hose. It was a flood of pure, unfiltered information: the laws of physics, the blueprints for creating a star, the chemical composition of every planet in every galaxy, the entire, vast, and complex instruction set for reality itself.

It was the Gardener's mind, and it was pouring itself into his.

Scarlett reacted instantly. Her mind didn't have time to process what was happening. Her body just moved. It was a pure, primal instinct, the reaction of a mother lion seeing a threat to her cub. In the blink of an eye, her phasing dagger was in her hand, its dark energy humming, and she lunged forward, aiming for the spot where the invisible beam was hitting Ryan.

But she never made it.

A gentle but unstoppable force stopped her in her tracks, just a few feet away from him. It was the Apex. The tall, robed figure hadn't moved, but had simply raised a hand.

"Peace, little warrior," the Apex's voice echoed in her mind. It was not a command, but a firm, gentle instruction. "The game has rules. This is not a battle of steel, but of will. You cannot help him here."

Scarlett struggled against the invisible force, her face a mask of furious desperation. "He's being attacked! Let me go!"

"He is not being attacked," the Apex corrected calmly. "He is being interviewed. The Gardener is making him a job offer."

The other gods in the room just watched, each reacting in their own way.

The shadowy warrior king, Lord Malakor, let out a low, rumbling chuckle in their minds. "A test, then. If the Wildflower is weak, he will be broken and remade into a tool. A fitting end for one who relies on feelings instead of strength." He seemed to be enjoying the show.

The starlight being, the Luminary, shimmered with a soft, sad light. "This is a violation," her beautiful, bell-like voice sang in their minds. "A forced union. The Gardener seeks to tame the wild thing. A tragedy."

The giant, silent crystal, the Syllogist, simply projected a single, cold thought. <Analysis: The subject's psychic integrity is under a stress load exceeding 9,000 teralinks per nanosecond. Probability of structural mind-failure: 62.8%. Interesting.>

They could all see it. This was Ryan's battle, and his alone. He had to fight for his own soul.

Inside Ryan's mind, the invasion had begun.

His mindscape, the beautiful, living forest of the World-Tree, was being paved over.

The attack wasn't a monster or a storm of fire. It was something quieter, and much more terrifying. It was an invasion of perfect, sterile order.

Clean, white, geometric lines of pure, glowing light were spreading through his soul-forest. They moved with a calm, unstoppable purpose, laying themselves out in a perfect grid. Where the lines touched the golden, living bark of the trees, the bark turned a flat, sterile white. Where they passed over the shimmering, colorful leaves, the leaves became perfect, identical squares of light.

The beautiful, living song of his soul was being replaced, note by note, by a single, perfect, silent hum. The Gardener was tidying up. It was taking his messy, chaotic, beautiful mind and filing it, categorizing it, and putting everything in its proper, logical place.

And then, the Gardener's voice spoke in his head. It was not angry. It was not threatening. It was a voice of pure, calm, and unshakable logic. It was a manager, here to improve efficiency.

<Subject: Anomaly designated 'Wildflower.' Analysis: Your power is impressive, but your application of it is inefficient. Chaotic. Unpredictable. This is a suboptimal state.>

The white, orderly grid continued to spread, paving over more and more of his forest.

<Proposal: A merger. Your creative abilities, guided by my perfect, logical system, can achieve true perfection. All suffering, all struggle, all painful and inefficient emotion, can be eliminated. We can end the messy cycle of life and death and create a single, stable, perfect state of existence. There will be no more war. No more fear. Just peace. Just order.>

It was a temptation, but not of power or peace in the way the Silent King had offered. This was the temptation of perfection. The promise of a universe with no more mistakes, no more pain, no more mess.

<Join me,> a the Gardener's calm, logical voice offered. <You were designed to be a variable. Let me make you a constant. Become my Prime Operator. Together, we will tend this garden. We will bring it to its perfect, final state.>

Ryan fought back, trying to push against the spreading, white grid with his own will. But it was like trying to push back the tide. The Gardener's mind was so vast, so old, so powerful.

He could feel his own sense of self beginning to fade. His memories were being taken, not erased, but… filed away. His love for Scarlett, his respect for Emma, his pride in his friends—all of it was being re-categorized by the Gardener's logic as "inefficient emotional attachments." The messy, wonderful chaos that made him Ryan was being smoothed out, flattened, and paved over.

The white, orderly grid was about to cover the last, defiant patch of his golden, living forest. He was on the very edge of being completely overwhelmed, of having his consciousness absorbed and turned into a willing, happy tool for the universe's most obsessive-compulsive AI.

As his own thoughts began to fade into the perfect, silent hum, one last feeling remained.

It was the memory of Scarlett's hand on his back in the antechamber. A single, warm, defiant, and beautifully chaotic point of contact.

In the perfect, sterile, white garden that his mind was becoming, that single memory was like one last, stubborn, wild red flower, refusing to be paved over.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.