They think it’s a game about flowers,
a delicate dance of petals and colors.
How quaint.
How laughable.
They’ll plant their seeds,
tend to them with love,
carefully arranging the soil,
believing they can coax beauty from it,
as if it’s that simple.
As if they hold any control at all.
He watches from the edges,
a smile curling at the corners of his mouth.
They think the game is about growth,
but they don’t see the thorns buried beneath
each fragile bloom.
They’ll compete for sunlight,
fight for space in the soil,
and they’ll water their plants with hope,
believing their tender care
will bring them victory.
How precious.
How doomed.
The flowers will rise,
each one thinking it’s the one that’ll stand tallest,
the one that’ll claim the prize.
One by one,
their flowers will wilt.
Not from drought.
Not from neglect.
No, it’ll be the quiet poison,
a whisper on the wind,
a subtle shift in the air
that makes everything bend,
twist,
and collapse.
He’s already won.
You just don’t know it yet.
They’ll look at each other,
grasping at the threads of their alliances,
thinking if they just work together,
if they just pull in the right direction,
they can outlast the inevitable decay.
Fools.
They don’t realize that their bonds are nothing
but a distraction.
The soil beneath them shifts,
the roots twisting,
growing in directions they didn’t plan.
They’ll reach for the light,
but it’s always just out of reach.
And as their petals fall,
as their stems wither,
they’ll know -
but it’ll be too late -
they were never in control.
He smiles,
not because he’s cruel,
but because it’s all so easy.
The flowers rise,
they bloom,
they fade,
and in the end,
none of them will last.
In the end,
there’s only one flower that survives,
and it’s the one he has already planted,
before the game even began.
They think it’s about beauty,
about the growth of something pure,
but really,
it was always about death.
And in that death,
The bringer of death thrives.
They’ll only know the brightness.
They’ll only know the light.
But no one told them
that the victor was already chosen -
and it wasn’t any of them.