CHAPTER 232: CHAPTER 232 - CORRODED

The invasion began like a whisper, soft and unassuming.

Then it screamed.

The outer hull groaned as the first wave of vines punched through the auxiliary docking seals, tearing open the corridors like paper. Roots as thick as torsos coiled through the vents, lashing out with shocking precision. Panels burst. Lights shattered. The sound of Farian soldiers screaming echoed through the ship’s hollow belly.

"Containment breach on Deck 4!" someone yelled over the intercom, their voice warbling in static. "They’re—gods, they’re everywhere!"

Dican burst through the hallway junction, sword already drawn. Its blade shimmered faintly with Void Pulse energy, humming with every breath he took. Vines slithered toward him like snakes sensing heat. He swung clean through the first—schick—cleaving it in half, sending thick green sap spraying against the walls.

But another followed. Then another.

And then a flower bloomed.

It was beautiful. Horrifyingly so.

Petals the color of bruised sunset unfurled in an instant, releasing a cloud of glittering spores. A soldier behind Dican gasped, dropped her weapon, and fell to her knees, clawing at her own face. She began laughing.

Then screaming.

The flower lunged—bit her.

Sharp petal-edges clamped over her neck and torso, and with a wet crunch, she was gone.

Dican turned, slicing through another vine that reached for him, his blade glowing brighter with every swing. He panted, sweat sliding down his face, his arms aching. But for every tendril he cut down, three more came.

"Fall back!" he roared to the remaining troops. "To the central core! Seal everything behind you!"

But the vines moved faster than anyone expected. They twisted around limbs, snapped weapons from hands, and dragged bodies into the churning tangle of green that now surged like an ocean wave through the ship.

Rhea appeared beside Dican, blood smeared down her shoulder. "We’re not going to make it to the core."

He looked around—at the flowers blooming on every surface, at the petals fluttering like wings, at the mouths within them filled with teeth made of pollen and poison.

She was right.

They were being overrun.

---

Bian stood in the main observation chamber, frozen. The twin suns illuminated the madness outside—the way the forest had moved to consume them.

Inside, his crew was dying. And all he could do was watch.

The command deck behind him was gone, swallowed in flowering vines. Blood splattered the floor. Screams were everywhere. Even the air tasted wrong—sweet and sharp and full of decay.

His knees buckled, and he dropped to the ground, his hands trembling violently.

"No," he whispered. "No, no, this wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t—"

The whispers in his mind had become a full chorus now. Laughing. Singing. Calling his name with voices that bled into one another.

He backed away from the cracked viewport, stumbling toward a corner, lips trembling.

"I didn’t want this. I just—I wanted to be someone. I wanted him to stay."

He pressed his palms over his ears. "Stop. Stop talking. Get out of my head—!"

A strange hush fell.

And then behind him, something opened.

He turned slowly, as if dragged by invisible strings.

There, blooming silently from the floor where no plant had been before, was a massive flower. A deep violet hue pulsed through its petals, which opened with slow, rippling trembles. Its center yawned wide, revealing an almost translucent core that glowed faintly with light.

It smelled like memory.

Like warmth and heartbreak.

Like home.

Bian gasped.

And then the flower surged.

Petals snapped open with shocking speed, wrapping around him before he could scream. He flailed—screamed once—and then was pulled into its soft center.

The vines around it quivered in unison. The flower pulsed once.

And Bian was gone.

---

Dican turned sharply as a distant thump echoed through the lower deck walls. A sound like air being sucked into a vacuum. His stomach dropped.

"Bian," he whispered.

But it was too late.

He reached the observation chamber minutes later. The room was still—eerily so. No vines slithered here. The chaos had paused.

But Bian was nowhere to be seen.

Only a massive purple flower stood in the center of the room, gently pulsing, a soft tremble running through its petals like breath.

Dican took a single step forward, sword still drawn. "Where is he?"

The flower twitched.

Something inside him shifted—memories, long buried, brushed against his skin like a forgotten wind. He staggered, one hand bracing against the wall.

The massive purple flower pulsed like a living heart, its petals rising and falling in a rhythm too slow, too deep—like the tide of something ancient. In the quiet of the observation chamber, Dican stood breathless, his sword trembling faintly in his grasp.

He knew.

He knew what the flower had taken.

And still, some part of him—a part too stubborn to die—hoped it wasn’t true.

He stepped forward.

The petals reacted instantly, bristling like hackles raised in warning. Thin tendrils uncurled from beneath the bloom, lashing toward him. Dican didn’t hesitate—his blade sang, cutting through the appendages with swift, clean arcs. Green sap sprayed across his face, acidic and sizzling, but he didn’t flinch.

"Give him back," he growled, more to the planet than the flower.

Another lash. He ducked, rolled, came up under its base and drove his blade into the thick stem that anchored it to the floor. A shock ran through the room—like something massive screaming in silence. The petals shuddered, trembling violently.

Dican drove the sword deeper, twisting.

With a final shriek of rupturing plant matter, the bloom cracked open.

A burst of luminous, violet fluid splashed out, flooding the room with a sickly sweet scent that made Dican’s stomach twist. Within the flower’s now-split body, half-curled in the liquefied sap like a corpse in a cocoon, floated Bian.

His body was limp.

Eyes closed.

Mouth slightly open.

But worst of all—his skin was no longer whole.

Dican’s breath caught. His chest locked.

Bian’s uniform had melted away, revealing skin that blistered and bubbled like it had been steeped in acid. His chest rose barely—shallowly. But his left arm—

Dican staggered forward.

The flesh of Bian’s left arm was gone.

From the shoulder down, it was stripped, eaten away by the corrosive fluid. What remained was a fragile lattice of brittle, white bone. Thin. Barely held together. The fingers—once elegant and precise—were nothing but skeletal splinters swaying in the liquid.

"No," Dican breathed. "No, no, no—"

He reached into the liquid, uncaring of the sting that met his skin. He wrapped an arm around Bian’s torso and pulled him free, cradling his limp body against his chest.

The flower’s inner glow began to dim, as if sated. As if offering no apology.

Bian shuddered faintly.

He was alive.

Barely.

"Stay with me," Dican whispered, voice breaking. "Don’t you dare give up now."

Bian’s eyes fluttered.

Slits of red peered through his lashes, unfocused and dazed.

"Hurts," he croaked, lips split and dry. "Everything—hurts."

"I know," Dican choked. "I’m going to get you out."

He slung Bian’s weakened form over his shoulder, shielding the skeletal remains of the prince’s arm as best he could. Every movement jostled his wounded body, and Bian hissed in pain, but didn’t protest.

The wound... it was irreversible.

Even with Farian regeneration chambers, even with neural grafting and stem cell reconstitution—they could never rebuild bone from nothing. Not like this. Not this cleanly erased. Not this far gone.

That arm would never return.

Dican’s hands clenched tighter around him.

And somehow... that hurt more than anything else.

---

The ship was in chaos.

The vines had pulled back slightly, almost... respectful of the sacrifice they’d made. Or perhaps they were simply waiting. Digesting.

Dican moved quickly through the corridors, navigating flickering lights and fallen beams. Quarantine alarms still wailed faintly in the background, though they were starting to sound more like funeral bells.

He burst into the storage bay where the vent shafts met the lower levels.

"Quangya!" he shouted.

A pair of eyes blinked from the shadows, followed by the quiet rasp of the old man’s voice. "We’re here."

The vent grille popped loose a second later, and Quangya dropped down, his face pale, his clothes soaked in sweat. He barely had time to look before he gasped.

"Is he—?!"

"Alive," Dican said. "But we’re out of time."

The old man stepped forward, eyes narrowing at Bian’s grotesquely damaged arm. "w...what happened to him..."

"It tried to eat him."

"No," the old man said quietly. "Is he going to be okay."

Dican froze. "he... He will be alive

."

Quangya stared at the glowing veins still pulsing faintly along the flower fluid dripping from Bian’s soaked body.

"We need to get to the secondary shuttle," Dican said. "Now."

---

They moved quickly, weaving through the lowest decks where the vines hadn’t reached fully—yet. Every now and then, a flower opened gently as they passed, following their movement like eyes.

Dican tried not to look at them.

He focused on Bian’s breath. It was still shallow, still ragged.

But steady.

That arm would never heal.

Not in this life.