My Scumbag System-Chapter 390: Our Disaster

"Unless what?"

She reached out toward the flower. Not to touch it, but close enough that frost began forming on her fingertips.

"The guardians were ice-aligned," she said. "Connected to the cold. To the Garden’s winter aspect."

"And?"

"And I’m ice-aligned too." She looked at me. "What if the flower isn’t poison to me? What if it’s compatible?"

I grabbed her wrist, stopping her an inch from the petals.

"Or," I said carefully, "what if that’s exactly what it wants you to think? What if it’s counting on you making that connection and taking the bait?"

She hesitated. "You think it’s a trap."

"I think everything here is a trap. The question is whether the trap is obvious or clever."

"So we leave both?"

I stared at the vial. At the promise of healed skin and functional arms and not feeling like someone had stuck my limbs in a deep fryer and forgotten about them.

My reflection in the nearest mirror smiled. Not my smile. Something meaner.

I turned away from the pedestal.

"We leave both," I said. "Whatever game the Arborist’s playing, we’re not playing by its rules anymore."

"Braxton would be proud. You’re learning to walk away from stupid bets."

"Braxton thinks I’m a disaster waiting for an audience."

"You are." She followed me toward the chamber’s exit. "But you’re our disaster."

We passed through the far archway into yet another tunnel. Behind us, I heard something shatter. Probably the vial, breaking on its own. Probably the flower, withering without a victim to claim.

Probably the Arborist, throwing a tantrum because we’d refused its gifts.

The tunnel twisted and turned, leading us deeper underground. The air grew thicker. Warmer. The knife’s glow began to dim, like something was actively draining its light.

Cel stumbled. I caught her automatically, my burned arms screaming in protest.

"Sorry," she gasped. "I just need—"

"I know." I shifted her weight against my side. "Lean on me. We’ll trade off when I inevitably collapse."

"That’s not reassuring."

"It’s realistic. There’s a difference."

We kept moving. Her breathing got shallower. Her steps got slower. The girl had pushed herself past every reasonable limit, spent everything she had keeping us alive, and was now running on fumes and sheer stubbornness.

Seraphina’s sister indeed.

The tunnel opened into a small cave. Natural this time, not carved. Stalagmites jutted from the floor. A small pool of clear water sat in one corner, reflecting nothing.

"Rest stop," I announced.

Cel didn’t argue. Just sank to the ground against the nearest wall and closed her eyes.

I checked the water first. Dipped my fingers in carefully, ready to yank back if it tried to eat me or showed me visions of my dead mother.

It was just water. Cold and clean and completely ordinary.

I filled our canteens, then brought one to Cel. She drank without opening her eyes, trusting me not to poison her.

That trust hit different. Heavier than it should.

I sat beside her and finally let myself examine the burns properly. The skin was blistered and raw, weeping clear fluid that definitely wasn’t supposed to be outside my body. The cold water helped when I poured some over the wounds, but it was a temporary fix at best.

Without Emi’s healing aura, these burns would take weeks to recover. Maybe longer.

Assuming we lived that long.

"Let me see," Cel said quietly.

I showed her. She winced.

"That looks painful."

"It’s manageable."

"You’re lying."

"Yeah. But it sounds better than screaming."

She took the canteen from my hand and poured water over my arms with careful precision, washing away the accumulated dirt and ash. Her touch was gentle. Professional. Like she’d done this before.

"Seraphina made you learn field medicine?"

"She made me learn everything." Cel’s voice carried no bitterness, just statement of fact. "First aid, tactical assessment, political manipulation, twenty-three forms of etiquette, and how to smile while someone’s actively trying to destroy your family."

"Sounds like a fun childhood."

"It was necessary." She tore a strip from her already ruined shirt and began wrapping my forearm. "My sister built her empire on preparation. On knowing every variable. On controlling every outcome."

"Must’ve been lonely."

Her hands paused. Just for a second.

"Yes," she said quietly. "It was."

We sat in silence while she finished the makeshift bandages. They wouldn’t do much, but they kept the wounds clean. That counted for something.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Depends on the question."

"When you told me the truth earlier. About needing me to investigate your father." She looked up at me. "Was that really the only reason you wanted me in Onyx?"

I could’ve lied again. Should’ve, probably. Kept the walls up, maintained the distance, treated her like the political asset she was supposed to be.

But I was tired. And hurt. And so far past my limit that honesty felt easier than deception.

"No," I said. "It wasn’t the only reason."

"What was the other one?"

"You reminded me of someone."

"Who?"

"Doesn’t matter. They’re gone."

She didn’t push. Just finished tying off the bandage and settled back against the wall.

"Thank you," she said.

"For what?"

"For not lying this time."

I didn’t have an answer for that.

We rested for maybe an hour. Maybe less. Time still felt slippery down here, like the Arborist was playing with the flow and nobody had bothered to tell us the rules.

When we finally stood to leave, Cel swayed on her feet.

I caught her elbow. "You good?"

"I’ll manage."

"That’s not what I asked."

"I said I’ll manage." Her voice carried steel beneath the exhaustion. "We’re close. I can feel it. The Garden’s heart is ahead. The Arborist is there."

"How do you know?"

"The cold is calling to me. Everything ice-aligned in this place is pointing in the same direction, like compass needles finding north." She looked at the tunnel ahead. "Whatever happens next, it happens soon."

I wanted to tell her we could turn back. Find another route. Wait for rescue that wasn’t coming.

But I’d never been good at lying to myself.

So I picked up the bat, gripped the silver knife, and followed Cel deeper into the Garden’s heart.

The tunnel walls changed as we walked. The glass became crystal, then diamond, then something that had no name but sparkled with its own internal light. The faces disappeared, replaced by scenes. Memories.

I saw the Necropolis. Saw myself taking that hit meant for Emi. Watched my own chest cave in from the outside.

I saw Natalia’s face when she thought I was dying. Saw the moment her power exploded and her Bond Rank hit ten.

I saw Skylar on the balcony. Saw the kiss that started this whole mess.

I saw Emi in my bed, looking up at me with those trusting eyes that made guilt taste like copper.

I saw every manipulation. Every calculated move. Every time I’d chosen strategy over honesty.

"It’s showing you regrets," Cel said softly.

"I don’t do regrets."

"Everyone does regrets. You just bury yours deeper."

Maybe she was right. Maybe I was exactly the monster Kaelen had been, just wearing better skin and a Student ID.

The tunnel opened into the final chamber.

And I stopped breathing.

The space was enormous. Cathedral-sized, with a ceiling that disappeared into a sky that shouldn’t exist underground. Stars glittered up there. Real stars, not the bioluminescent bullshit from earlier.

At the chamber’s center grew a tree that made the First Tree look like a sapling.

Its trunk was easily fifty feet across, wrapped in bark that shifted between every color imaginable. Roots thick as highways spread across the chamber floor, diving into the earth and pulling up through cracks in distant walls. Branches reached toward that impossible sky, heavy with fruits that glowed in a dozen shades.

And standing at the base of that tree, waiting for us like he’d been there since the universe was young, was the Arborist.