The Sin of the Seed

The fluorescent lights of the Krones Research Lab were supposed to be the lights of progress. To me, they were the lights of an interrogation room.

I am Willare Frindjen. A junior assistant. A nobody in the grand design of Avalia Krones. I was supposed to be processing the genetic sequences for the third iteration of the Krones Formula—the one that would make the wheat resistant to the frost of the northern borders.

But my hand slipped. Or my mind did.

A momentary lapse, a misaligned sequence in the bioreactor, and the wheat didn't just grow faster. It mutated. The green turned to a sickly, pulsating red. The stalks didn't look like grain anymore; they looked like thorns. And the spores... they smelled like rotting roses.

I should have reported it. I should have pressed the emergency vent button. But I saw what they did to the last assistant who made a mistake. They didn't just fire him; he vanished. In Thornus, silence is survival.

So, I deleted the logs. I burned the samples. I thought I had erased my sin.

But then I saw the reports from the slums of Predymesh. A girl with a red mark on her forehead. A vegetative state. They called it the Touch of Rose. My rose.

The guilt is a physical weight, a stone in my stomach that grows heavier every time I look at Dr. Krones. She is so perfect, so brilliant, so unaware that her masterpiece has birthed a monster.

I started drinking to drown the screams in my head. I left Proythom—my sweet, honest Proythom. I couldn't look into his eyes without seeing the crimson leaf on that girl's brow. I told him I didn't love him. It was the only way to save him from the rot I was carrying.

Tonight, I am at The Tipsy Lizard. The ale is warm and tastes like regret, but it's the only thing that silences the ticking of the lab clocks.

The bar was too loud, too crowded with people who still had souls. I climbed the rusted ladder to the rooftop. The rain of Predymesh washed over me, cold and indifferent. Below me, the city glowed like a dying ember.

"I did it," I whispered, my voice cracking under the weight of the confession. "I created the Rose. I killed that girl. I saw the sequence break and I did... nothing."

I felt the words spilling out, a flood of poison I couldn't hold back anymore. I confessed everything—the misaligned sequence, the deleted logs, the cowardice that was now a plague. I shouted it into the wind, thinking I was alone with the gargoyles and the smog.

It was gone. The weight. The words weren't claws in my chest anymore; they were just vibrations in the cold air. I had told the stars how I broke the world. If the wind took them, they weren't mine anymore. I felt... light. Empty. Like a vial that’s finally been drained of its poison.

I wiped my eyes and stumbled back toward the ladder, a ghost of a smile on my lips. I could sleep now. I could finally sleep without seeing the rose.