The new universe was born with scars.
Galaxies coiled like fiddlehead ferns, their spiral arms dripping nectar that crystallized into proto-stars. On a nameless moon orbiting a black hole nursery, a child dug her hands into soil that remembered being stardust. The rusted sickle blade she'd found pulsed faintly, its edge whispering of wars fought before light learned to bend.
"Māma! It's singing again!"
The farmer turned, her shadow stretching long in the light of a young sun. Her face held Ling'er's stubborn chin and Jiang Yue's crescent-moon scar. "That's no song, Xia. It's a receipt."
The sickle's whisper sharpened:
"Payment due: One universe, lightly used."
First Frost: The Debt Collectors
They descended at dusk—shapes cut from the negative space between constellations. The Auditors wore event horizons as robes, their faces shifting equations that burned to witness.
"The Black Nectar was a loan, not a gift," hissed the lead Auditor, its voice a dying star's final tremor. "Time to balance the books."
The moon trembled. Xia clutched the sickle as fungal script crawled up her arms—Chu Feng's Bloodvine, dormant in the soil until now.
The farmer stepped forward, hands blooming with phoenix fire that smelled of Ling'er's lightning-lemongarden hair. "We don't trade in debts here. Only seeds."
The Auditors laughed in supernova harmonics.
"Seeds are currency where we're from."*
Second Planting: The Ghost Harvest
The Auditors' demand unfolded in poisoned arithmetic:
Principal: The mass of three nascent galaxies
Interest: The firstborn child of every replanted world
Collateral: The sickle blade ("A trinket from our last defaulters")
Xia's Bloodvine roots reacted violently, anchoring her to the moon's core as the soil erupted in defense:
Chimeric Wheat sprouted thorns that dripped temporal pesticides
Truth Tubers vomited Li Zichen's triage logs as acidic mist
Forgiveness Sparrows dive-bombed with beaks of fractured code
The farmer fought with Ling'er's grace and Jiang Yue's ruthlessness, her phoenix fire mutating into something new—Wildfire Moss that ate equations and excreted lullabies.
But the Auditors weren't Harvesters. They harvested harvesters.
Third Blight: The Unseen Ledger
Xia fled to the moon's dark side, the sickle's whispers now a scream. Beneath a granite overhang, she found the Root Cellar—a bunker of living mycelium where Chu Feng's consciousness had been composting.
"They're not after the Nectar," the walls pulsed in fungal morse. "They want the interest on your mother's grief."
Memories flooded Xia's Bloodvine:
Ling'er's ashes fertilizing the newborn universe
Jiang Yue's lullaby encoded in every star's vibration
The truth—Xia was the first "interest payment," grown from salvaged clone DNA
The sickle flared. "You're the receipt."
Final Reaping: The Fractured Vow
Xia returned to the battlefield, her Bloodvine now threaded with Chu Feng's celestial roots. The farmer lay broken, her wildfire moss smoldering.
"Take it," the farmer gasped, pressing a seed pod to Xia's chest. "The last Chimeric Rose."
The Auditors loomed. "Defaulters will be repossessed."
Xia did the forbidden—she grafted the rose to the sickle, then plunged it into her own heart.
The universe shuddered.
"New terms," she hissed through bleeding gums. "We keep the light. You take the shadows."
The Auditors' equations frayed as the rose bloomed, its petals singing Jiang Yue's lullaby in Chu Feng's voice.
*"Interest compounded: 100%
*"Collateral forfeited: The debt itself
"Payment accepted."
The Auditors dissolved into static, their ledgers overwritten by wildfire moss.
Xia awoke in the root cellar, the sickle now a sapling growing from her ribs. The farmer tended her with hands that left soil under fingerprints.
"They'll be back," Xia croaked.
The farmer smiled, her eyes holding galaxies Chu Feng had cradled. "Let them. We'll plant new lies."
Outside, the first frost melted into dew. Somewhere in the black hole nursery, a newborn god laughed.