Saoirse cut the vine an inch from her own throat.
SHNK.
It fell in two pieces, curling where it landed among the flowers already growing up through a cracked helmet nearby. She dropped to one knee, breathing hard through her nose, and looked up as Lysandra crossed the broken marble toward her, thorn spear dragging a thin line across the stone.
The garden had been beautiful once. It was still beautiful, in the way a wound looks clean before it starts to smell.
Flowers pushed up through the joints of old armor half-buried in the soil. Roots split the marble tiles in long cracks. Thorn vines climbed the broken saint statues on either side of the courtyard, and where blood had soaked into the ground, the flowers grew brighter than anywhere else.
[LYSANDRA — BRIDE OF THORNS] [LEVEL: 97] [HP: 57,000 / 57,000] [WEAPON: THORN SPEAR]
