The Krones Formula was my greatest secret, and my greatest mistake.
I never intended to harm anyone. I was a strategist, a builder. I had found the Proxanian Seeds and a small cache of Sansu Syrup in an illegal excavation before the military seized the mountain. I saw the potential. The Children of the Mountain didn't just grow food; they grew a consciousness. I wanted to replicate that—to create a botanical neural network that could save Thornus from itself.
But science is a jealous mistress, and she does not forgive silence.
I had been keeping the Proxanian materials hidden in plain sight, mislabeled as standard industrial supplements to avoid government detection. To Willare, my assistant, they were just canisters on a shelf. She didn't know the world I was trying to build. She only knew the pop songs humming in her ears and the nitrogen cycles we were supposed to be monitoring.
When the reports of the "Gilded Sickness" first reached the lab, I felt a cold dread settle in my stomach. I demanded to see Patient Zero. I used every ounce of my influence to get us into that clinic in the slums.
We stood over Pellera Orlong. A twelve-year-old girl, silent and glowing with a faint, iridescent light. And there it was—the crimson mark on her forehead. It wasn't a rash. It was a bridge.
I looked at Willare. I saw the color drain from her face. I saw the realization hit her like a physical blow. She didn't have to say it. I knew which canister she had reached for while I was away. She thought it was nitrogen. It was the Crimson Binder.
I should have exposed her. I should have confessed then and there. But I couldn't. To explain the 'Touch of Rose' would be to explain the Syrup, the Seeds, and my own treason against the state.
So, I stayed silent. I watched Willare crumble under the weight of a guilt she didn't fully understand. She thinks she made a simple mistake in a genetic sequence. She doesn't know she accidentally triggered the Proxanian Echo in a human host.
The 'Touch of Rose' isn't a disease. It is my failed network, and it is now using human minds as its soil. And as long as I want to stay alive, I have to let the world believe it is a mystery.