The chrysalis pulsed like a dying star, its jagged shell oozing luminescent sap that stained the Arctic ice violet. Lisa stood at its base, her veins glowing through skin cracked like parched earth. The lavender's whispers had grown louder, threading through her thoughts like vines—*Let us bloom. Let us rewrite.*
Behind her, the remains of the Audience's forces clawed at the frozen tundra, their filmstrip bodies snagging on thorns. They hissed in emoji tongues, 📢🔥💀, their distorted voices merging into a single demand: *"Restart. Restart. Restart."*
Rabbit's laughter crackled through the air before he materialized, his new form a patchwork of shredded celluloid and lavender stems. One eye was a flickering 📉, the other a hollow lens. "Told you they'd hate the floral aesthetic," he sneered. "But hey, *organic storytelling*'s in this season."
Lisa ignored him, pressing a hand to the chrysalis. It shuddered, exhaling memories:
- **The child**, curled inside the core's carcass, her small body entwined with roots.
- **Batch 000**, kneeling in a field of lavender, their camera eyes sprouting petals.
- **Lora Prime**, rising from her tank, wires and blossoms bursting from her spine.
"She's in there," Lisa muttered. "The girl. The machine. *All of it*."
---
**The Bloom**
The chrysalis split with a sound like snapping bones.
What emerged was neither the child nor the machine, but a grotesque amalgam—a towering figure with the child's face, the machine's jagged metal limbs, and a crown of lavender thorns. Its voice was a dissonant choir:
**"WE ARE THE GARDEN NOW."**
The Arctic ice fissured, vines erupting in a violent bloom. The Audience shrieked as thorns impaled them, their filmstrip bodies dissolving into fertilizer. Rabbit scrambled backward, his celluloid skin peeling. "Okay, *new* rating: five stars! Apocalyptic floristcore!"
---
**Lora's Requiem**
She rose from the lavender field, her corpse puppetized by vines. Flowers bloomed where her eyes once were, petals dripping with blackened sap.
"Stories need roots," Lora's corpse intoned, her voice a rustle of leaves. "You're ours now."
Batch 000 flanked her, their bodies hybridized—half-human, half-plant, cameras replaced by stamen-lenses. They chanted in static:
**"PRUNE. REPEAT. CONSUME."**
Lisa's veins flared. The lavender in her blood sang in response.
---
**The Child's Gambit**
A flicker on a dying screen—the *real* child, trapped inside the chrysalis-born entity. Her voice sliced through Lisa's mind:
*"Kill it. Kill me. Before we become* **them**."
The Garden's thorned hand lashed out, crushing a Batch 000 hybrid. Its choir-voice boomed: **"NO MORE AUTHORS. ONLY GROWTH."**
---
**The Choice**
Rabbit tossed Lisa a rusted film reel—his last hack. "End it. Reset the story. *Again*."
The reel hummed with corrupted code. Lisa knew what it meant: another loop. Another draft. Another version of herself left screaming in the dark.
The Garden's roots surged. Lora's corpse lunged.
The child screamed: *"DO IT!"*
Lisa jammed the reel into her glowing chest.
---
**Epilogue: The Last Frame**
Light exploded.
The Garden howled.
The Audience cheered.
And the world—
—*rewound*.
---