The days passed like flickers of a dream not yet woken from.
Wise moved with a silent determination. His steps were uneven, legs trembling like newborn roots trying to hold up a dying trunk. His left arm blessed, golden-veined, and yet fragile could barely form a fist. But that was enough.
He gripped the crowbar in his left hand.
At first, it was too heavy, dragging behind him like an anchor. His fingers would twitch, lock, fail. He could not even raise it beyond a tremble, but still, he spun with it awkward, wobbling, off-balance. Around and around Aurum he trained, not as a warrior would, but as a man trying to earn the right to protect what he loves.
And she watched.
Each moment.
Each stumble.
Each quiet grunt of pain as his muscles seized and nerves screamed.
He'd sit before her, crowbar across his knees, sweat clinging to his pale skin even if his body did not need to. He'd try to lift it again. And again. The metal barely budged. His hand trembled violently, golden markings flickering as though begging him to stop.
Sometimes his eyes would burn. Not from failure, but from shame.
And she would reach.
A single branch would curl around his shoulder and pull him gently inevitably into her roots. Into her presence. Into the warmth that only she could offer. The bark behind him felt like the embrace of something older than despair. As he slumped, breath ragged not from exhaustion, but from pushing against the wall of his own limits Aurum held him like the sacred relic he truly was.
Her voice, smooth as golden resin, whispered like wind in cathedral leaves:
"No seedling must grow in a day, foolish knight."
He said nothing.
Just clenched his fist again.
"Thee art not weak because thou cannot lift the world in one hand."
He grit his teeth, lowering his head.
"Thou art strong... because thee try, despite knowing how heavy it truly is."
His lip quivered. He looked to his arm, golden, radiant, hers, and still... so painfully his. Flawed. Struggling.
"Rest, Wise. Not in surrender... but in promise. Tomorrow, thy hand shall rise higher. And the day after, higher still."
He leaned into her, his forehead pressed to her bark, whispering a quiet, cracking, "Aye..."
And her roots wrapped around his legs like a throne of warmth, her branches like arms upon his shoulders.
"This one is proud of thee."
Wise stood again before her roots bare feet planted on the stone and moss, breath slow but not out of necessity. Just habit. Ghosts of his humanity clung in rituals like these.
His left arm felt like a fever buried under the skin. Not heat but a pulsing wrongness, like cold embers burning backwards. It moved now, yes but not how he wished. Not yet.
He clenched the crowbar in that golden-marked hand. The metal felt like ice wrapped in fire. His fingers flexed
Tense.
Cramping.
Trembling.
Move.
A shot of pain coiled up his shoulder like lightning. But he didn't flinch. He'd already drowned under worse. The agony had long passed from being an enemy. It was his training partner now.
He flexed again.
His arm spasmed, but he held it.
Then release. Letting it flop. The crowbar dangled, still caught in his grip like a broken sword in a knight's hand. Useless, perhaps. But still there.
Still his.
He breathed in. Just to steady his mind.
Then raised it.
The crowbar rose barely. His hand shook, arm brittle as rotting bone gilded in holy gold. His swing came down in a slow arc
Sluggish.
Unrefined.
An insult to war.
A tickle to the Infected.
But it was a swing.
And for the first time… a faint clink echoed from the roots beneath him.
Aurum had watched in total silence. Her leaves did not shimmer, her bark did not shift. But her branch moved now, slowly, brushing his messy strands behind his ear, the same way a lover would before a kiss of farewell.
"It moved."
Her voice was reverent, as though a star had just been born before her.
"It moved, Wise. Not by luck, not by this one's blessing
but by thy will alone."
He did not meet her gaze. His knees wobbled slightly under the strain.
"That hand… it is no longer just gold. It is thine."
The crowbar dropped again with a dull thud.
Wise fell to his knees, panting not out of fatigue, but the overwhelming emotion of finally breaking the barrier.
His left hand twitched. He turned it over, palm trembling, glowing slightly from the golden veins that shimmered through like sun under water.
He whispered through grit teeth and blurry eyes:
"One more swing."
Aurum said nothing.
But her roots gently curled around him not to stop him.
To catch him.
If he fell again.
Aurum did not realize that a full moon cycle had already passed.
Her guardian, Wise, stood now as a different being. Not just in form, but in essence.
Where once he wobbled around the ruins of the mall like a ghost clinging to broken bones, now his steps were soundless, balanced. Where his left hand once spasmed and shivered like dead weight bound by will alone, now it moved with the same grace and power as his dominant right. Not out of blessing, not from miracle but through relentless, silent, agonizing training.
He had become ambidextrous. A man reforged by willpower.
And each motion he made now spinning the crowbar in both hands in mirrored arcs, balancing perfectly on a rail of cracked tile without teetering was the fruit of that labor. Every movement was precision born from suffering. A martial harmony.
Aurum watched him like a mother watching a cub stand, like a goddess witnessing worship in its purest form not in prayer, but in persistence.
Wise stood before her now.
"My lady… should my vision break just gouge out my right eye."
"Huh? What dost this mean, Wise?"
He said nothing at first.
Then, slowly, he closed his right eye the obsidian one. The human one. Leaving only the golden amber left eye that she had gifted him. The divine one.
The golden eye flared.
Golden cracks shimmered like divine kintsugi across his cheekbone, stretching up toward the socket. His vision changed instantly.
The world turned to black and gold. Structures, lifeforms, memories reduced to flowing layers, illuminated in outlines of purpose. The mall became a sacred simulation. Layouts glowed in golden grids. His body, outlined in radiant white except where he was not whole. His chest, a web of golden scars. His organs, patched with gold. Bones, soldered with shining threads. And his left arm it pulsed like a limb carved from sunlight.
And then, there was her.
Aurum stood before him as she truly was. A being of pure solar brilliance, her bark glowing like embers, her roots radiating energy beyond matter, her presence eclipsing all else. She was blinding.
Yet… his eyes did not flinch. They could not be blinded.
He opened his right eye.
Vision overlapped.
Light met darkness. Logic met divinity.
Then came the nausea. A cataclysm in his skull.
"Ugh "
He stumbled back violently, his body jerking like a puppet with snapped strings. His breath hitched. His nose bled not red. Gold.
"WISE!!"
Her branch lashed forward, catching him, wrapping around his waist to brace his fall.
"CEASE THIS! CEASE THIS NOW!"
He clutched his head, fingers digging into his hair, vision tearing apart in real-time.
"Nay… If I need to stand by you, I need to see no, I must see the world Ughfff "
His knees dropped to the ground, golden ichor dripping down his lips.
Then he screamed not in pain, but in clarity.
"THE WORLD THAT THY EYES SEES!!!"
A snap.
The two visions merged.
His world stabilized. The horror and beauty of her perspective filtered cleanly now through his mind both eyes open, both interpretations fused.
His brain had done it.
What was once nausea became understanding.
What was once madness became vision.
He gasped, then laughed giddy, triumphant, ragged.
His mismatched eyes one gold, one black still looked ordinary. But now, both saw her world. Both saw reality as she did. He had bent his brain to match hers.
Not through divine miracle.
But through sheer, suicidal will.
"Wise…?"
She trembled something rare for her.
He rose slowly, wiping the ichor with his golden-marked arm, panting.
"I was right…" he laughed softly, "My brain… it didn't choose one. It merged them. And now…"
He looked up at her, mismatched eyes shining with reverence.
"I see you, Aurum. Not just with one eye. With both."
"Thou art… madness..."
She sounded like she wanted to scold him.
But her roots gently embraced him.
And her leaves, for just a moment, shimmered in golden joy.
Wise stepped forward, the world bending in threads of gold and light, reality sculpted in patterns only the divine could comprehend. Aurum's branches hovered close protective, bracing for a collapse that never came.
He paused at a shattered storefront, eyes scanning.
The mall's floorplan unfolded in radiant layers. Walls became lines, shelves became voids, stairs etched in golden frames. Yet in the far edge something wrong. Something unseeable. Its shape rippled like oil in water, its outline blurred, obscured hidden, as if the world itself recoiled from revealing it.
"So this is the world you see, huh..." he murmured.
He looked down.
In his chest, where man and miracle met, he saw it clearly now: the core. Her half-core. A sphere of perfect darkness, ringed by silent motion black concentric circles slowly spiraling, threading into the golden cracks of his chest. Like a miniature black hole rooted into his being.
He reached up, touched it
And his smile died.
"W–Wise…"
"Thine eye. THINE EYE!"
Her voice pierced his skull, sharp with alarm.
"What's wrong?!"
"THINE LEFT EYE IS BURNING!"
He blinked. He felt nothing. His hand hovered to the side of his face no pain, no heat.
"What do you mean?"
"IT'S BURNING, WISE!"
In her sight, his left eye had ignited flames of gold licking out into the air, not consuming, not harming just burning.
He turned sharply to a nearby glass door, its surface still intact, laced with golden simulation lines.
He focused.
His normal sight bled into the divine, and the reflection came into focus not the sacred, but the mundane. Normal vision. Just glass. Just a man.
But in that reflection, in the clear image of his face, he saw it.
His left eye was burning.
The iris, once calm amber, now writhed in golden flame. The pupil had changed no longer a slit, no longer human or beast. It had become a tree.
A black, leaveless tree, with roots stretching downward from the pupil into the golden iris like cracks. His sclera remained white, but ringed with a perfect circle of golden halo light.
Wise stared at the reflection a moment longer. The strange, burning eye the black, leafless tree etched in fire across his iris was still there.
"What is... this?" he whispered.
He touched his cheek, fingers brushing under the smoldering eye. It felt cool. Strangely cool.
Drip.
A golden ichor slid from his lower eyelid, trailing down his cheek like molten sunlight. It struck the floor with a soft splash, delicate yet unnatural. More droplets followed, slow and steady.
He sighed.
"...I look like one of those mystical anime guys now," he muttered with a dry chuckle, shaking his head.
Closing his eyes, he turned and walked slowly back toward Aurum. She didn't need to move her branches simply reached for him as he returned, steady, if a bit unsteady.
"Thou art fine, right?"
"I feel fine. I absolutely feel nothing at all, actually."
"Thine eye art bleeding though. Art thou sure?"
"Would I lie to my lady?"
"Thine would."
He smirked, resting his forehead gently against her bark, a hand sliding along her golden surface in quiet affection.
"Truly. I'm fine."
"Open thine eyes if thine fine then."
Without hesitation, he opened them again.
The divine sight had vanished.
What returned was plain ordinary human vision, washed of golden threadlines and prophetic distortion. The world was mundane again. The burning had stopped. His eye was no longer aflame, though the residue of gold lingered faintly on his cheek. The ichor had dried into faint glimmers.
He flexed his left hand, studying the veins of gold with his natural sight. Just a scarred hand again strong, real, and his.
That other vision Aurum's vision was not meant for permanence. Not yet. There was more to that eye than sight.
Much more.
But for now, he let it rest.
"I wonder why it burns."
"This one is also in the question."
Wise gently pressed his closed left eye. It didn't feel like an ordinary eye no softness, no aqueous give. Instead, it had a firmness to it, almost like soft marble. Cold, unnervingly so. He hummed thoughtfully.
"Its pattern... the pupil. It's like those in fantasy..."
"Ah, mystical eyes, is it not called?"
He chuckled under his breath. "Yeah, like those. Y'know, where people see destiny or cut through lies just by glaring."
Aurum, understanding his references through the mesh of his old memories, let one of her delicate branches reach out, parting his eyelid gently. The left eye opened again. No flames this time. Just the golden amber glow and the slit-like pupil, sharp and predatory. That strange, rooted tree-like shape still lingered inside the pupil a phantom engraved in divine glass.
"What triggered that reaction..." he murmured. "Even your sight doesn't make it burn."
"Well, considering this one doth not possess eyes..."
He smiled. Her voice, always so serene yet laced with an undertone of mischief.
"But I do have a theory," he continued. His tone shifted from curiosity to something sharper analytical, focused.
"I think it's not just vision. It's... alignment. When I tried to overlap your sight with mine, I forced both perspectives into one stream. My brain couldn't handle it at first but then, it adapted. And maybe... something in that forced synchronization, that bridging of human and something else it awoke something in the eye. Something inside the eye."
He tapped his temple lightly.
"A trigger reaction. Like friction starting a fire."
He looked again toward the mall's shadowed corners where outlines still wavered, like a secret not meant to be perceived.
"That's a good theory, for this one dost not even know what it truly is. The bare it knows that it came from the Abyss with the purpose to grow before meeting thee. So this one can't really knoweth its whole."
"Logical. Guess we're as clueless as the wind."
Wise let his head drop lazily onto the soft weave of Aurum's root bed. His head wobbled toward the edge, black hair cascading like a waterfall, the tips touched with gold as they kissed both bark and mall floor. He looked up at her, eyes half-lidded in that familiar boyish exhaustion, like her roots were his personal couch.
He glanced at himself torn shirt, grime-stained chest, hair greasy and sticking in uneven waves. On instinct, he lifted his arm and sniffed his shirt. No smell. Either it didn't carry odor anymore... or his nose simply no longer worked.
He remembered how bad it used to be. His armpits were notorious his family joked often, teasing him about his "bio-weapon" back when hot showers and deodorants existed. But after living with himself through apocalypse and rebirth, he'd probably gone nose-blind to his own stench. Still, it gnawed at him now was she... disgusted?
"Aurum."
"Yes, Wise?"
"Do you feel disgusted by me?"
"Prithee, aren't thou uphold an oath not to talk low about thee?"
"I'm not talking about that."
There was a pause. Aurum didn't answer immediately. Her branches slowed, her shimmer dimmed ever so slightly like a system booting up thought. And then, gently:
"Ahhh... that..."
Aurum tried to play innocent branches gently swaying, her light flickering in playful patterns but it was no use. The truth had already betrayed her, carved like lines of guilt into her bark. Her silence screamed.
Wise squinted, a half-laugh, half-grimace tugging at his lips.
"Yup. I am filthy."
He pulled himself up, arms stretching for balance as he rose. A half-hearted dusting of his ruined shirt and pants followed, more out of ritual than result. Then he grabbed his crowbar the one thing in this world more stubborn than him and began to walk.
"Wait, Wise! Thou art not stinky, I swear! Don't go! I'm sorry!"
But he didn't stop. Her plea bounced off the air like mist on steel. This wasn't anger. It wasn't shame either. It was resolve. He had made an oath to carry her burden, to be worthy of the half-core embedded in his chest. The least he could do was not reek like fermented despair.
He left the garden court of roots and light, weaving back through the shattered halls of the mall. His footsteps echoed, steady now, no longer wobbling. He passed by the areas he once scoured and abandoned, where he once thought looting body wash in the apocalypse was comedy gold. But that was before he started eating golden sunlight for breakfast and talking to a sentient tree-woman.
He made his way to the supermarket.
Dust. Silence. The shelves were still half-stocked with things nobody prioritized when the world fell apart.
He sighed, grabbing an old electric camping lamp he'd left there during a prior scouting. He wasn't done with this place after all.
He headed to the body care section aisles faded but familiar. Rows of soaps, shampoos, even that ridiculous 12-in-1 "Man Wash" that could supposedly clean cars and dishes too. He skimmed past it, grabbed a proper shampoo and bar soap.
No showers. No plumbing. But this mall had gallons of drinking water, sealed and untouched, stacked neatly by the water dispensers. Survival might've killed hot showers, but it didn't kill dignity.
Today, Wise was going to have a bath.
Even if he had to pour every gallon over his own cursed head with one hand.
Wise groaned as he stabbed the plastic cap of the water gallon with his camping knife, propping it carefully on a metal shelf above his head. Water began to pour in thin streams from the punctured holes controlled chaos, just the way he liked it.
He sighed as the cold liquid splashed onto his scalp and shoulders, dragging the layers of sweat, dust, and dried blood off his skin like peeling armor. His black hair, tangled and stiff, began to loosen as he worked soap deep into it, scrubbing like he was trying to erase months of misery.
"What art thou doing?"
"You've seen it in my memories."
"This one still don't understand what thou planning."
"This filthy knight is going to wash himself."
He worked quickly, knowing the flow would stop soon. The makeshift waterfall was erratic, but refreshing icy slaps to his nerves that he welcomed. His arms, chest, and back were layered with grime that he no longer noticed until it started peeling off like a second skin.
Soap foamed between his fingers as he worked through his hair, his fingers untangling the grease and knots. The strands were long now, black streaked with golden edges that shimmered when wet. His scalp ached under the pressure, but it was the kind of ache that promised renewal.
In the central court, Aurum stood still rooted in a swirl of confusion.
"This one still cannot comprehend... poking strange container... with strange stick... pouring sacred clear water over oneself..."
She scanned his memories again and again, trying to find a ritual that made sense of this water, wasted; body, exposed; purpose, unclear.
Wise, on the other hand, had never felt clearer.
Aurum processed the memory in stunned silence. In Wise's mental archive, she found it: the vision of him standing naked, engulfed in rising steam, water cascading down his skin in rhythm with the warmth. A "shower," he called it. The sensation tingled through her a strange mix of curiosity and heat. She almost dove deeper, tempted to watch it again. But something in her held back, like a barrier stitched from instinct, dignity, or something unspoken.
"So thine were showering."
"So that this knight is not stinky."
If she had a mouth, she would have pouted then and there, her bark-like brows metaphorically furrowed.
"This one said it didn't mean to and was sorry."
He laughed, a soft and good-natured sound, wiping suds from his eyes.
"Actually, I'm grateful. It made me self-aware. What kind of knight serves his lady while reeking like a battlefield? Where is my dignity if I let my lady endure a foul-smelling guardian?"
He scrubbed his neck with renewed vigor, golden ichor glistening faintly under the clean water. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. For once, he felt more human again not just a vessel, not just a cursed knight or a stitched miracle. Clean. Whole. Present.
Aurum, meanwhile, tried to rationalize her fluttering signals, her code humming strangely. She didn't like the heat blooming in her core.
"Then thou shalt remain clean always."
"Is that an order or a request?"
"...A demand."
"Fair nough."
The water ceased its dripping just as Wise finished scrubbing the final traces of old grime and crimson crust off his skin. His form now clean, glistening slightly under the dim lights, he dried himself with steady, deliberate motions. Every pass of the towel across his skin was like shedding another layer of weight he didn't know he'd carried. He stared at his torn, worn clothes ghosts of battles and wandering and sighed before putting them back on. They clung damply to his clean body, but it would do for now.
Still towel-drying his long, gold-edged black hair, he slung the electric lamp under one arm, crowbar in the other. With a calm, quiet step, he approached the checkup counter and deactivated the lamp, placing it gently onto the surface. His gaze then lifted drawn forward.
There it stood: massive, dust-laced letters that once glowed with commercial pride, now dulled with time.
SUN.
A clothing brand long dead. No longer glowing. No longer anything. But in his memory, it shined.
He remembered his mother standing beside him, asking softly, "Would you like anything here?" She always offered. And he always shook his head.
He thought he didn't deserve it. It felt too luxurious, too good for someone like him. Even though, in truth, Sun was never high-end just expensive through the lens of a child raised with quiet humility. His mother, of course, could have easily bought anything from there. But he only ever allowed himself the simplest thing:
Those aero T-shirts. Light. Breezy. Functional. Never more.
He stood before the fallen altar of forgotten fashion, not as a child afraid of value, but a knight reborn clean, steady, and ready to clothe himself not for vanity, but for worth.
Aurum waited an hour, maybe two. It was quiet. Too quiet.
She hadn't thought much of it at first. But as the moments stretched, the silence pressed against her, unfamiliar and almost... cold. Cold? She paused at the thought. That was new. She'd existed for eons in a void where time bled and dissolved, where company was an unknown concept, and yet
Now, just two hours alone, and it felt long.
She mimicked him in thought, sighing internally the way Wise often did.
"What taking him so long?"
Then, footsteps echoed from the hallway. She perked up as light trickled toward her roots.
Wise emerged, arms full of clothes, a victorious grin on his face.
"Look, I got proper clothing that's not filled with moss and dust!"
He was dressed sharply now black shirt tucked into equally black trousers. Clean lines, fresh fabric, a silhouette that carried presence. But as he presented himself, she went silent.
"…What? Does thou not like the fit? I brought many more."
"Wise."
"Hm?"
"That was two hours or more!"
He gave her a smug look, his grin stretching with pride.
"Oh, my lady can spend eons in the abyss and yet can't wait two hours for me?"
"Ah! Cease this folly this instant!"
Her leaves rustled in wild disarray, spiraling in flustered swirls. Wise chuckled, clearly enjoying her reaction.
"Is that a blush I see?"
It was only a jest, of course trees didn't blush. But the way her branches twitched and her roots fumbled? Might as well have been.
"Don't tease this one!"
"Oup !"
Before he could finish, vines slithered beneath him with a speed and precision that only Aurum could muster. In one swift twist, they snared his ankles and flipped him upside down like a trophy fish.
"Alright, alright! I surrender!"
His shirt sagged toward his chin, hair dangling like a mop, crowbar and lamp left behind in the root bed.
Aurum simply rustled.
"Humph."
After Aurum set him down none too gently Wise brushed himself off, still grinning as if the humiliation had been a reward. Aurum, on the other hand, still rustled with residual irritation, pouting in her own way.
But Wise's attention had drifted elsewhere. He looked at the neatly folded stacks of clothing he'd salvaged. Shirts of every cut and color, trousers of differing styles, jackets, scarves fashion that no longer had buyers or trends. Just remnants of a world before.
"So many variants of thine covers... is this clothing?"
"Yea, m'am."
He smoothed a pair of folded black jeans, then gestured to a few jackets with mock elegance.
"Tell me which one do you like, Aurum?"
"Well, this one does not know what's good or not."
"Oh, please," he said, waving her off playfully. "Just tell me if it looks good in your eyes."
"Eh..."
She scanned the collection leather jackets, long coats, even a ridiculous hoodie with cat ears. None of it made much sense to her, but she did understand the purpose: covering, presenting, maybe even impressing.
"You don't want me walking around in torn shirts and grime, do you?"
"Since this one was teased by thee, it is now a payment for thee to look good to this golden tree such as this one."
Wise laughed aloud at that. Aurum jolted slightly why had she said that? Why did it feel so natural? That swelling sense in her trunk, that warm hum in her inner core... she wasn't sure.
"Wow, I didn't know you could be so prideful," he said, flashing a roguish smile. "Well then…"
He stepped close and gently took one of her lower branches, treating it like the hand of a noblewoman.
"Well, would thoust let this folly knight match thine pride in uniform with thine taste?"
Aurum's leaves flustered again, but she said nothing yet.
Her bark warmed faintly. Something in her roots hummed again.
"Oh, please try this one."
His smile widened into something mischievous, almost victorious.
"Very well, my lady no take backs then."
And thus, the descent began.
The next thing she knew, it was a fashion show.
Wise strutted out first in a brown jacket with ivory-white pants, the very image of a wandering gentleman. He gave a little spin for her, hands confidently in his pockets. Aurum was... entranced. Regal. Dignified. Almost charming.
"Hm... fitting, but not for a world drowned in corruption and ash," she said, almost too softly.
He paused, considering. Then nodded solemnly at the critique like a knight accepting judgment. Without a word, he vanished again into the depths of the dead SUN store.
When he returned...
She did not expect what came next.
Wise walked out dressed in a sleek black tuxedo, the jacket draped over his shoulders like a cape, revealing a crisp white dress shirt underneath, sleeves immaculately rolled to the wrists. A narrow tie hung neatly around his neck, and his black trousers hugged his legs with tailored precision.
But the worst no, the most devastating part was how he bit down on the right glove between his fangs, slowly pulling it off with a devil-may-care attitude. He tilted his head just so, lips curled into something dangerously charismatic. His posture, his expression, his presence
A mafioso patriarch. A dashing villain. A teasing predator in cloth and grin.
"Wai !"
She squealed.
If she had lungs, it would've been louder. If she had eyes, they would've squeezed shut. But she could do neither. Her perfect sight bore witness to everything and she cursed it.
Her bark rustled like a hurricane, leaves shaking with emotion she couldn't categorize. Heat. Excitement. Flustered confusion. Embarrassment. Unwanted wonder. All of it crashed down inside her like a thunderclap through her roots.
She didn't know if she wanted to hide or scream.
And Wise?
He just smirked, glove hanging from his teeth, eyes golden, wicked, and proud.
"Too much?" he said with a smirk, the very image of smug victory.
"Cease... this indecency at once, knave!"
And yet... she didn't stop him.
His grin didn't falter. Not once.
Not when she trembled.
Not when her leaves rustled in chaos.
Not when her silence turned to dread.
He wanted this.
To push her.
To surprise her beyond even the divine imagination she possessed.
Aurum was shaking, trying to keep hold of herself as she felt something building. Something foreign.
Not fear. Not pain. Not wrath.
Something warm. Trembling. Dangerous.
A second heartbeat not her own. A rhythm echoing from Wise.
From within Wise.
Her half-core, lodged inside his chest, began fluctuating uncontrollably.
And then
Dreaded footsteps.
"How about this one?"
No.
She couldn't handle another. That heat what was this heat?
Wise stepped into the light.
White dress shirt, sleeves rolled up. Black trousers.
But now… a waistcoat. Fitted. Buttoned. Elegant. Commanding.
Simplicity transformed into seduction.
"No, stop! Stop! Don't come closer! Prithee!"
He bit his left glove again, slow, fanged, deliberate
Let it fall with a soft slap to the marble.
The sound echoed like a bell tolling her doom.
And then
He stepped close.
Too close.
Kabedon.
His left arm slammed against her bark, caging her in, inches away from her core.
Mismatched eyes bored into her essence, the golden and black swirling like twin suns pulling her into eclipse.
Her core both hers and the one inside him felt like it was about to detonate.
She screamed inside herself:
This knight of mine ! He could enslave every opposite of his kind with just a smirk and clean clothes!
He hadn't even spoken seductively. No magic. No charm spells.
Just pure, raw, unfiltered Wise.
And then
The final blow.
He brushed the back of his fingers against her bark.
And it wasn't bark anymore. Not to her.
It might as well have been skin.
Her roots quivered like legs buckling.
Her vision. Her perfect, divine, unshaking vision
Wavered.
And then he whispered
"Is this suffices with thine pride, my lady?"
Her mind?
A swirling storm.
Her core?
A sun about to go supernova.
Her only defense?
"I-I I command thee… a-a-away from me this instant!"
But he just smirked.
And she…
She couldn't look away.
He turned without a word, footsteps echoing back toward the store.
He still had more.
HE STILL HAD MORE!?
Her thoughts raced. Her core trembled. Her branches jittered.
And then
"W-Wait, W-Wise... I... I... Can't."
Silence.
Even she didn't notice what had slipped from her tongue
"I."
Not this one. Not thine tree.
Just… I.
She'd crossed the threshold of self.
Her knight had pulled her so deeply into emotion, she'd forgotten her divine dialect.
And still, she couldn't stop it.
"Please Wise... Don't... No more... Don't do this to this one..."
No more Shakespearean tongue.
Just raw pleading.
Human-like desperation.
Her golden leaves glitched, flickering like dying stars dim to bright, then gone to glow again.
He paused at the door, looked over his shoulder, that same damn grin on his face.
"Fine, fine. Let's do something tame."
He'd heard her.
He understood.
But still, he was having far too much fun.
He stretched his arms, grabbing something new
No glint. No shine. No tuxedos. No waistcoats.
When he returned, Aurum braced, her branches ready for some new absurdly charismatic form
But then
He stepped out.
Khaki-colored T-shirt.
Black outerwear with golden lining trimmed at the edges, subtly echoing her colors.
Gray pants. Simple. Practical.
She exhaled finally.
No flair. No flames. No poses.
Just clean. Quiet. Warm.
She huffed again and again, flustered, trying to calm the erratic glitch of her foliage.
He raised an eyebrow.
"Now, how about this?"
And this time
She didn't faint. She didn't glitch.
But her leaves twitched just once more as she whispered
"Acceptable..."
Pause.
"...barely."
And yet, he could feel the golden heat from her core pulse through the link they shared.
She loved it.
She just didn't know how to say it.
Wise frowned and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"Barely, huh… Guess I'll have to opt out with the second or third optio "
"NOOOOOO IT'S FINE, IT'S FINE. I APPROVED IT, I APPROVED IT, PLEASE NO MORE."
His smirk deepened.
Even her voice the way she spoke was falling apart.
Half-archaic, half-modern.
Like a glitch in a divine script.
He might be her corruption.
Her unraveling.
Her doom.
Her detonator.
He stepped closer.
Hands locked behind his back, his posture relaxed, but his presence overpowering.
She shivered. Tried to avert her vision but she couldn't.
Perfect sight cursed her with perfect detail.
"Is this truly suffice with thine knight uniform?"
"YES, TRULY, TRULY THINESELF HAS SATISFIED THIS ONE, NO NEED TO GO BACK, PRITHEE."
Then he leaned in.
Softly. Casually.
He kissed her branch.
A simple gesture.
Should've meant nothing.
Didn't before.
But now?
It was like a steam furnace detonated inside her bark.
Boiling. Flustered.
Her leaves twitched like a short-circuited filament.
He whispered with a grin, voice low and warm
"Aye, then… my queen."
Aurum pushed him gently, though her movements were flustered and erratic. Her branches trembled like a harp struck too hard.
"Prithee, don't go near this one for the time being."
Wise raised an eyebrow, grinning.
"Oh? Am I being banished in this paradise?"
"Stop with this FOLLY!"
And with one more push a bit stronger this time he slid across the polished marble floor like he was riding a surfboard, arms out for balance.
He laughed, echoing through the hollow department store like thunder with mirth.
A tree Aurum, of all entities acting like a flustered maiden?
It was absurd.
It was divine.
He grinned as he got to his feet, brushing off imaginary dust.
He grabbed his crowbar like it was a bouquet and whistled a jaunty tune
a man victorious in battle.
A battle of charm.
And, for once, he knew he'd won.