The air was filled with the scent of numerous different flowers, mixing together beautifully. Though, no matter how nice the smell really was, it was also rather overwhelming. Some of the species that had a more naturally keen sense of smell carried around face masks or handkerchiefs that they held in front of their noses to block the smell out a little bit. Ryan could understand why; he himself almost wanted to do so. While he was more focused on the visuals of the colourful flowers planted next to each other in front of them, climbing up the pillars alongside the path, Yanna was seemingly struggling.

  Not only was a minotaur's sense of smell on average about ten times more than that of species like humans, elves, or orcs, Yanna had the 'perception' stat that increased all her senses, including her sense of smell.

  "Are you okay? Should we go somewhere else?" Modak asked, placing his hand on the minotaur's back. But she quickly shook her head.

  "No, it's fine... It's just a little worse than it usually is on Regir's day..."

  "If you're sure. But tell me if it gets too much," he said, smiling up at her. Yanna smiled back, lightly bumping her shoulder into his.

  Standing just a bit in front of them, Ryan was trying to see the 'stage', the area that was circled by flowers right in front of the botanical gardens. He was pretty curious about what was going on there, and what everyone was waiting for.

  "What's the deal? Is it like this every time?" he asked as he looked at his uncle, who simply grinned a bit.

  "It is. I'm sure you'll like this. It should happen fairly soon," Runar looked down at the watch on his wrist, and Ryan curiously turned back over there. And that was when the crowd in front of him started to move a bit, and for just a moment, Ryan got a view of the middle of that 'stage', even if just for a second or two. There was a small plant sprouting, much, much faster than normal.

  It grew and grew, and soon, the bud was peaking out even above the heads of the people right in front of Ryan. But even then, it wasn't done. This flower had massive petals, twisting around each other. Slowly but surely, they came undone.

  The flower itself was beautiful, but that wasn't the focus. Rather, what everyone was looking at, and what everyone was here for, was the spirit that was unveiled as the flower bloomed. It had the appearance of a beautiful young woman. Pale green skin and an elegant dress made of flower petals.

  This was the first time that Ryan had seen a spirit outside of the ones he was the keeper of ever since he awakened. The air that was around the flower spirit in front of him was similar, but somehow incredibly different to that of Maximus, Gaia, or Gregor. Not to mention, she was a lot bigger. She was around Gaia's height, a metre tall.

  So why were the others so small? Did it have something to do with the 'seal' that was apparently placed onto them?

  "So? What'd you think?" Runar asked, and Ryan slowly turned toward him.

  "I don't know, what am I supposed to think?"

  "Well... it's a spirit."

  "Yeah, so?"

  "... Hm. Nothing, I guess," Runar replied somewhat awkwardly, as if he expected a spirit keeper to automatically really like spirits. And it wasn't as though Ryan didn't like spirits, but they simply didn't feel as distant and 'special' as they used to. And a moment later, this flower spirit in particular didn't feel distant at all.

  Her and Ryan seemed to lock eyes for a moment, though he was sure he imagined it. That was, until the flower spirit came flying straight toward him. She floated over the ground as if her body didn't weigh anything at all. The crowd split, and Ryan could see a small trail of flowers grow right underneath the spirit's body. They were the same flowers as the one that the spirit just came out of, just the size of a normal flower.

  It stopped right in front of Ryan, deeply staring at him, her lips curled up into a smile. The crowd's attention had turned toward him, and it was rather... uncomfortable. All those stares were digging into his skin. Even Runar was looking at him with some sense of disbelief in his eyes. But a moment later, Ryan could feel something inside of him twist and turn. Quite literally. Gaia was almost sitting up in excitement.

  For a moment, it seemed like she was just excited to see a flower spirit, being a gardener at all, but a different idea sparked into Ryan's mind. He carefully leaned forward to whisper into the spirit's ear.

  "Did Gaia... grow you?" he asked, pulling back a moment later. The spirit's smile grew larger, as if she was excited, and immediately closed the distance again. She gave Ryan a tight, excited hug, like when you met an old friend. It seemed like Gaia wanted to come out of her domain, but she was holding back because of the crowd.

  While the hug was still going on, Ryan whispered to the spirit again, "We'll come back later... so you two can meet properly, okay?"

  Startled, the flower spirit let go and nodded her head in excited disbelief. Like she was given a wave of excitement that reminded Ryan far too much of a young child, she flew up above the crowd. With a wave of her hand, flower petals rained down onto the crowd. The flower spirit waved at Ryan for a moment and then moved back over to her flower. Most of the crowd followed her movement, but the people that were with Ryan were still staring at him.

  "What did you say to her?" Silvia asked immediately, and Ryan laughed awkwardly.

  "I'll tell you guys later. For now... let's go, I think Yanna is struggling a bit," he pointed out, looking up at the minotaur. Of course, the flower spirit had an incredibly powerful scent, and with her literally a step away, it was too much for Yanna. She seemed quite sick from how powerful the smell was, and so the group quickly pushed their way out of the crowd. Liam was still stuck to Ryan's hand, actually squeezing tighter than he was before. Once they were in an area where not that many people were right now, everyone took a breather. Modak was taking care of Yanna, who was squatting down while trying to deal with how sick she was feeling.

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  "Did you know that spirit?" Ryan's mother asked him, but he quickly shook his head.

  "No, no, I don't. But I guess Gaia does," he pointed out, glancing over to Runar. At this point, he had given up on getting surprised by these new revelations.

  "How nice! Why didn't she come out to say hello?"

  "Ah, I think she was too nervous to come out in front of the crowd," Ryan explained, "But I told that flower spirit that we would come back later. I'm guessing she lives here at the botanical gardens?"

  Runar quickly nodded, "Yes, she settled in there maybe fifty years ago when it was first opened, apparently."

  "Hm, alright. Then we'll go back when there's not too many people," Ryan said, "It does seem like Gaia wants to-"

  He flinched. An uncomfortable sensation invaded the back of his head. It was uncomfortable and 'wrong', as if it wasn't supposed to be here. It was a familiar sensation. Ryan turned around for a moment, his breaths growing heavier and faster. But the sensation was already gone. Did he imagine it? He could swear he just felt a spark of corruption. Or at least something similar to it. Since it disappeared right away, maybe it was just an uncomfortable glare of someone that didn't like that Ryan was interacting with a spirit? Corruption usually lingered a lot more.

  But no matter how much he looked, he couldn't find it again. Ryan should still talk to Runar about it later. For now, though, the group stepped away from the botanical gardens. It was far too full and here in particular, the smell was clearly too much for Yanna. And Runar was trying to hide it, but he also apparently awakened his perception stat and raised it quite a bit, so he was dealing with how strong the smell in the area was as well.

  But that was fine, there were still plenty of things for them to see. The whole city was decorated with beautiful garlands celebrating Regir, the great spirit of nature. That meant no matter where you went, you could see a new side of the city you lived. It was actually the perfect time for Ryan's mother to come here for a visit, since she could see so many new parts of the town over the next week. She seemed to be quite excited to do so as well, and was talking to Runar about some random, boring stuff that people their age liked.

  But looking over to his friends, it seemed like they were all rather deep in thought about something. Yanna was still recovering from the assault of those scents, and Modak was mentally at work. That was something he was expecting, but he was a bit surprised about Silvia and Fae. Silvia was biting her nails in thought, while Fae's confusion was quite literally written on her skin. The patterns usually adorning her canvas-like body were twirling around and changing rather rapidly, like her thoughts were racing.

  "You alright?" Ryan asked, and Fae looked at him a bit startled. She looked over at Silvia, wondering if he was talking to her, but Ryan shook his head, "No, Silvia is just thinking about some new painting she wants to make. But you seem a little nervous about something. Is everything okay?"

  Waves of colour flowed over her body in tune with her clearly fast heartbeat.

  "I, uh... I'm just a bit surprised, that's all. I mean, a spirit just came up to you and hugged you and stuff. And not just any spirit, but Maribelle, who's famous for never giving even a moment of attention to people she doesn't care for."

  Ryan raised a brow, "You know about her?"

  "Oh, yeah! My mother is a florist, so I always grew up around them, and I don't know if you've seen my art but I do use flower motives a lot. So when I moved to New Riverside, I immediately came to the botanical gardens and saw Maribelle there for the first time," Fae explained, "I painted her for one of my classes' final last semester..."

  Ryan smiled a bit. He wanted to offer Silvia to come with them when meeting her later, but he knew that there were going to be a lot of conversations about things that he didn't really want too many people to know about. Ryan figured he should probably go alone, especially if Maribelle didn't usually like interacting with people. But maybe he could ask if he could come back with his friends, and then Fae could meet Maribelle.

  Ryan turned toward Fae with a smile, trying to say he would ask the spirit about this later, but the words didn't leave his mouth. Rather, he stopped walking altogether, as he spotted something unexpected. In the distance, though not too far away, stood a young woman in a white dress. Her skin was light brown, and the antlers on her head were adorned with glass flowers.

  Practically startled, Ryan called out to his uncle, "Runar!" he said, not turning away from the woman in fear of her just disappearing when he even just blinked.

  "What? Is everything okay?" Runar asked, and Ryan nodded.

  "Yeah, yeah, just take Liam's hand for a second, I need to- I need to check on something..."

  Runar did as asked and grabbed Liam's hand instead of Ryan, and only then looked over to the place Ryan was incessantly staring at. When he saw that woman standing there, he realized what Ryan was about to do, but it was too late. He was already running toward her.

  Ryan was worried that she was going to try and get away, but she just kept standing there. And the closer he got, the more he could see her scowl. Her angry, hateful scowl.

  He slowly stopped in front of her.

  "Uh... hey, are you-"

  "How dare you?"

  "Huh?"

  "How dare you mess it all up? Do you even know how tangled it's all gotten?" she practically growled at Ryan, "With every step you take, it just gets worse?"

  Ryan's stomach dropped, "I... what do you mean? Why did you mess with Silvia? D-Did you make her awaken?"

  The woman took a step closer to Ryan, "Make her awaken? Hah, no, of course not. She was never supposed to awaken. It's all gone wrong, so incredibly, incredibly wrong. I tried to undo the mess you made, but because of all those that were interfering, it just got worse."

  She glanced down at Ryan's arm, "Even that symbiote... do you know what you did by bonding with it? Do you know what sort of ruin you brought to the future?"

  "I don't... I don't understand what you're talking about. How am I messing things up? I'm just trying to help, that's all I've ever wanted to do."

  She started laughing, "Yeah, well, that doesn't matter. The only way for you not to have messed up this world was for you to not be born in the first place. Though even before then, things became a true, complete mess."

  "Well... well what can I do? If things are a mess, tell me how I can fix it."

  Despite Ryan's hopes, the woman just glared at him with more hatred flowing through her, "Nothing. Just do nothing. Hide away in your home, don't interact with anyone ever again. Make people forget you even exist, and let things go the way they're supposed to again. With time, the knots that you created might come undone."

  "I don't know what you're talking about, what am I doing that's so bad?"

  "You exist, that's bad enough," she explained, "The flow of everybody's lives is like a river, flowing together and alongside each other in a natural, smooth way. Sometimes, the river is blocked, but the water will flow around it. Diverge slightly, but in the end, it will always return to its path. What you're doing is wading through that river, building a dam, and making it flow the wrong way. Because you're not a part of the river. You're just a... a terrible villain that exists to make the river of fate dry up."

  "I..." Ryan looked back at her, trying to figure out what to say. But she didn't care anymore. She wasn't even really looking at Ryan, rather focusing her eyes on something around him.

  "All those threads clinging to you, when you don't even have your own... I hope you're happy."

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