Victoria distributed the seeds with ceremonial precision, placing one in each person's palm with the reverence of a priestess conducting sacred rites. They were unlike anything Erel had ever seen—black as obsidian but unnaturally warm to the touch, pulsing with an internal rhythm that felt disturbingly like a heartbeat against his skin. The surface seemed to shift and ripple when he wasn't looking directly at it, as if something alive writhed within the glossy shell.
She gestured toward the seven plots of rich, dark soil arranged in their perfect circle, each plot emanating its own subtle hunger. "Plant your seeds and tend them with truth. But understand—these are not ordinary plants. They feed on honesty, grow strong from confession, and wither from lies. Each seed will battle the others for dominance. Only one plant will reach the light above."
"And the person whose plant dies?" Miss Grey asked, though her expression suggested she already knew the answer she dreaded to hear.
"Becomes fertilizer for the survivors," Victoria replied with casual cruelty, her rose-petal eyes blooming with sadistic pleasure.
Miss Blackwood's face drained of all color, leaving her looking like a porcelain doll abandoned in moonlight. "This is madness. You're asking us to compete for our lives by... by confessing our secrets?"
"Not just secrets, darling. Your deepest truths. The things that define who you really are beneath all the carefully constructed pretense and social masks." Victoria's vine-threaded fingers traced patterns in the humid air. "The wounds that never healed, the choices that haunt your dreams."
Captain Stone stepped forward, his military bearing evident even as sweat beaded on his weathered forehead. "What if we refuse to participate?"
"Then all your plants die simultaneously, and you all become fertilizer together. The game requires willing participation—that's what makes it so deliciously cruel." Victoria's laugh was like wind through a graveyard. "Free will is such a beautiful thing to corrupt."
Miss Blackwood was trembling like a leaf in a storm, her small hands clutching her seed so tightly her knuckles had gone white. "I can't do this. I can't share... I have to find Sarah. I can't die here."
Miss Grey placed a protective hand on her shoulder, her investigative instincts warring with genuine compassion. "We don't have a choice. If we're going to survive, we play by the rules—no matter how twisted they are."
Why the hell did she even enter the plane? Erel wondered, studying Miss Blackwood's obvious terror. Something seems off about her story.
Reluctantly, the group approached their chosen plots with the solemnity of condemned prisoners walking to the gallows.
Let's test the extent of his bullcrap, he thought, watching Professor Thorne fuss with his ever-present notebook as he took the sot next to him.
As they knelt to plant their seeds in the hungry soil, Erel struck up what appeared to be casual conversation with Thorne. "Professor, this reminds me of the bio-magical experiments at the Thornfield Research Station. Didn't they have something similar like a truth-responsive organisms?"
Thorne's eyes lit up with academic interest, his scholarly mask slipping back into place. "Oh yes! Though their methodology was quite different. They used crystalline matrices rather than organic growth mediums. Fascinating theoretical applications."
Another nonexistent research facility. He's responding like it's common knowledge in academic circles.
"The watering begins now," Victoria announced, producing an ornate watering can that seemed to be carved from living wood, its surface crawling with tiny rootlets and budding leaves that pulsed with their own heartbeat. "But before you begin, understand this: your plants will only grow strong enough to survive if you feed them your most vital truth. Not surface embarrassments or minor shames—the truth that cuts deepest, that you guard most fiercely."
The group exchanged uncomfortable glances, the weight of impending vulnerability settling over them like a funeral shroud.
"Most vital truth?" Dr. West asked carefully, his clinical detachment wavering for the first time.
"The secret that defines you. The moment that broke you. The choice that damned you." Victoria's smile was predatory, revealing teeth that seemed to have too many edges. "Anything less, and your plant will be too weak to compete against the others."
Miss Blackwood stepped back, shaking her head with desperate denial. "I... I can't. There are things I've never told anyone. Things I can't say out loud."
"Then you'll die," Victoria said with casual finality, as if discussing the weather.
Captain Stone's jaw tightened, his military training warring with the supernatural horror of their situation. "How do we know you're not just trying to extract information for your own purposes?"
"Because, darling, I already know all your secrets. The plants require truth not for my entertainment, but for their survival. Feed them lies or half-truths, and they'll be devoured by the stronger specimens." Victoria's vine-threaded fingers caressed the air. "Truth is nourishment here. Deception is poison."
"I'll go first," Erel said suddenly, surprising himself with the decision.
Get it over with. Show vulnerability to encourage the others. And maybe... maybe it's time to finally say it out loud.
The watering can felt unnaturally heavy as Erel lifted it, the weight of more than just liquid inside. The supernatural water swirled with phosphorescent patterns that hurt to look at directly, like staring into a kaleidoscope made of captured starlight. He poured it over his planted seed, the otherworldly liquid seeming to seep into the soil with hungry eagerness.
"My parents died in the Shadowmere Incident." His voice was barely above a whisper, but in the supernatural silence of the conservatory, everyone heard every word with crystal clarity. "Everyone thinks they died because the plane was too dangerous, because they weren't prepared for the supernatural threats. But that's not what happened."
He could feel his hands starting to shake, years of carefully buried trauma clawing its way to the surface. "They had already figured out how to overcome the plane's defenses. But I was dead weight—barely a toddler who couldn't understand the danger."
The words felt like they were tearing his throat apart, each syllable costing him blood. "They... they made me go first. Dad literally threw me through the planar tear while Mom held off the shadow wraiths with her bare hands. They could have saved themselves, could have let the plane claim me and escaped together. But they chose to sacrifice their lives for mine instead."
Erel was fighting back tears now, years of suppressed grief clawing at his chest like a living thing. "All because I was curious about planes, I was just a scared child hiding behind his parents while they died for me. Every breath I take is stolen from them. Every day I live is a day they'll never see because they loved me more than their own lives."
The water mixed with his tears as it hit the soil, creating a luminescent paste that glowed like captured sunlight. The earth blazed with brilliant light, and his plant emerged strong and vital, nourished by the deepest pain he'd ever known.
Miss Blackwood was crying just from watching him, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. "Oh God," she whispered, then looked at her own watering can with pure terror.
"I can't follow that," Captain Stone said hoarsely, his military composure completely shattered, "It was a mistake coming into this plane."
"You have to," Miss Grey said quietly, her voice gentle but implacable. "We all do."
Miss Blackwood's hands were shaking so violently she could barely hold the watering can without spilling its contents. "Sarah didn't just disappear," she finally choked out, her voice breaking like glass. "She... she ran away because of me. Because I was supposed to be her guardian after our parents died, but I was so lost in my own grief that I completely failed her."
Her voice broke completely, dissolving into sobs that shook her entire frame. "She tried to tell me how much she was hurting. She'd come to my room at night, crying, wanting to talk about Mom and Dad. But I was so wrapped up in my own pain that I'd tell her to go back to bed, that I couldn't handle her grief on top of my own."
The tears were streaming down her face now, washing away her carefully applied makeup. "The night she left, she begged me one last time. Said she felt like she was drowning and needed her big sister to save her. And I... I told her I couldn't save anyone, not even myself. That she needed to grow up and stop being so needy."
Her sobs made it hard to understand the next words, each one torn from her throat like a confession extracted under torture. "She said she wished she'd never had a sister who was too selfish to love her. And she was right. I failed the one person who needed me most because I was too broken to see past my own suffering."
The soil accepted her anguish with brilliant light, her plant emerging fragile but determined, fed by genuine remorse and sister's love poisoned by grief.
Captain Stone stared at his watering can for a long moment, his military composure cracking like armor under overwhelming stress. When he finally spoke, his voice was thick with barely controlled emotion. "Seven good men died because I couldn't admit I was wrong."
His weathered hands began to shake as memories he'd tried to bury clawed their way to the surface. "The intelligence reports were questionable—every instinct I had screamed it was a trap. But I'd failed on my previous mission, and I was so desperate to prove myself, so terrified of being seen as indecisive, that I ignored every warning sign."
His voice grew raw with self-recrimination. "Rodriguez had a three-week-old daughter he'd never seen. He carried her picture everywhere, talked about teaching her to play baseball when he got home. Martinez was rotating home after this mission—his mother was dying of cancer and he wanted to spend her last months with her. Thompson showed me pictures of his fiancée every single day, planning their wedding down to the flowers."
His voice cracked entirely, the disciplined soldier dissolving into a broken man. "I led them straight into a planar crack because I was too proud to admit uncertainty. Seven good soldiers screaming on the radio for extraction that would never come while battling frenzied creatures that tore them apart. I can still hear Martinez calling for his mother as he bled out. Still hear Rodriguez begging me to tell his baby daughter that daddy loved her."
The water fell from his trembling hands onto the soil like tears from heaven. His plant emerged strong but heavy, weighted with survivor's guilt and the ghosts of seven dead men.
Dr. West approached his watering with clinical precision, but his professional mask was slipping like makeup in rain. "I stopped seeing patients as people years ago. They became research opportunities, data points in my quest for medical advancement."
His voice grew quieter, more human, as if rediscovering his humanity was physically painful. "Mrs. Henderson was seventy-three, dying of an aggressive cancer strain that was perfect for my research. Her granddaughter begged me to let her go home, to spend her final weeks with family instead of hooked to machines. But I convinced them that aggressive treatment was their only hope."
He stared at the watering can as if it contained liquid poison. "She died alone in a sterile room, connected to monitors and tubes, screaming for her granddaughter in her final moments while I harvested tissue samples. Three months of agony so I could publish a paper that might win me a research grant. Her granddaughter sent me a thank-you letter afterward, grateful I'd 'done everything possible.'"
His hands were shaking now, the clinical detachment finally crumbling completely. "I keep that letter in my desk drawer. I read it whenever I need to remember what I've become—a monster who feeds on human suffering disguised as medical progress."
The soil accepted his confession with a sickly, dim glow that spoke of deep self-loathing and corrupted purpose.
Madame Ravenwood's theatrical persona melted away completely as she clutched the watering can like a lifeline. "Margaret Thornwell's son died at Verdun. She came to me every week for six months, spending money she couldn't afford, begging me to contact him."
Tears streaked through her elaborate makeup, revealing the broken woman beneath the mystical facade. "The spirits... they showed me nothing. Just empty, mocking silence. But she was so desperate to believe he was at peace, that he'd forgiven her for their terrible fight before he shipped out. She was spending her grocery money on sessions, going hungry just to hear from her dead boy."
Her voice broke completely, dissolving into sobs. "So I lied. Week after week, I gave her false messages from beyond. Told her William forgave her, that he was proud of her, that he watched over her from heaven. I let her spend her life savings believing every fabricated word."
She was sobbing now, her carefully constructed mystical persona in complete ruins. "When she died—alone and penniless because she'd spent everything on my lies—she left me her house in her will. Said I was the only one who truly understood her connection to her son. I still live in that house. Sleep in her bed. Surrounded by pictures of the boy whose death I exploited for profit."
Her plant sprouted with unexpected vigor, fed by genuine remorse and the weight of maternal grief exploited.
Miss Grey's confession came in clipped, professional tones, but her hands trembled like autumn leaves. "David Morrison was nineteen years old, honor student, completely innocent of Rebecca Walsh's murder. I knew it within hours of investigation—timeline didn't work, alibi was solid, witness descriptions didn't match."
Her professional mask was cracking like ice under pressure. "But the real killer was Judge Crawford's nephew. Crawford had connections to the governor, the police chief, half the city council. Arresting him would have destroyed my career and accomplished nothing."
Her voice grew raw with self-hatred. "So I planted evidence. Cocaine in Morrison's car, made sure he was pulled over during a 'routine' traffic stop. Added drug trafficking to murder charges, painted him as a dealer who killed a customer. Clean narrative, easy conviction."
The pain broke through her controlled facade like water through a dam. "David hanged himself in his cell three days before trial. Used bedsheets torn into strips. Left a note saying he couldn't live with his mother thinking he was a killer and a drug dealer. Mrs. Morrison still sends me Christmas cards every year, thanking me for 'finding justice' for Rebecca."
Her voice was barely a whisper now, each word a blade twisted in her own heart. "She has no idea I destroyed her innocent son to protect the real monster."
The soil blazed with fierce light, accepting her self-hatred and moral corruption like a starving beast.
Professor Thorne adjusted his spectacles with academic precision, seeming oddly detached from the emotional devastation around him. "Academic integrity sometimes requires flexibility. I've adjusted experimental data when results don't adequately support theories I know to be correct."
His plant emerged looking artificial compared to the others—too perfect, lacking the organic irregularity that marked genuine growth.
Finally, Adren spoke, his voice hollow as an empty grave. "I ran away. I hated living in that house with all those monsters, so I ran away. She begged me to take her as well, my dear Mira, but I left her there. I left her in that hell of a house with all those fuckers who only care about fake family status and pretense, who will take away everything from her just as they did from me."
He poured the water with steady hands despite the horror of his confession, each drop seeming to carry the weight of abandoned love.
His plant sprouted immediately, strong and bright, fed by his sister's yearning and his own devastating guilt.
"Magnificent!" Victoria clapped her hands together, seemingly delighted by their collective suffering. "All seven seeds watered with authentic truth. But now... now they begin to compete."
The plants began growing at supernatural speed, their growth visible to the naked eye as stems lengthened and leaves unfurled.