Panting, Cassio staggered back and sank to the ground, his chest rising and falling hectically. Only then did his lips part and let out a ragged moan, lamenting the ripped state of his arm. It throbbed with pain, clouding Cassio's mind, but even this couldn't compare to the mental fatigue this short fight had brought: it had been the first time the situation forced Cassio to take action after action with such intensity, adjusting his improvisation with the pressure of death hanging over him. Still, a tremulous smile played on his lips as he was brooding over the way he had played the role.

Of course, Cassio wasn't Odysseus, and neither could he accurately predict how Odysseus would have acted. However, when performing a role, an actor must switch to the mindset of a character he played. Thus, picking up Odysseus's mask, Cassio swept away all possible and impossible solutions that didn't rely on trickery and cunning. A low grunt of satisfaction reverberated through his throat.

'What a good performance it was. It's a shame there is nobody to shower me with ovations.'

Cassio slowly crawled up to his feet, careful not to put any weight on his shredded arm. The sight of his flesh dangling loosely almost made him stumble and compelled him to grit his teeth in order to abstract his mind from pain, which was not only throbbing but also strangely itching.

Meanwhile, the wall of dust was settling and revealing an enormous hill of rocks that towered ten meters high and blocked the passage of the mine completely.

He turned around and peered into the only remaining passage. By the time he took the first step, a quiet rustle had resounded behind him.

Cassio whipped his head around, his gaze sweeping dazedly over the rocks: once the dust had fully settled, several crushed limbs showed up from under the boulders. There lay a blooming one who had only partially escaped the crushing weight of the tomb: his lower half was completely pulverized, yet he still tried to crawl toward Cassio, scratching the ground with his fingernails.

'Huh, so they don't die even from this... Were they even alive in the first place?'

Watching the struggles of the upper half, Cassio swayed from a sudden realization: the rustle wasn't coming from this crushed survivor. The grey thorny vines were sprouting from under the rocks where the knight was supposed to lay.

'No way...'

The rocks shuddered and rolled to the side, soon revealing the figure of the knight slowly crawling up to his knees: his armor was almost completely shredded, and from under its remnants peeked out rotten flesh and splinters of bones.

Nevertheless, even with his every bone visibly snapped, the knight could still move – thorny vines slithered through his flesh like headless snakes, the frenzied parasites that willed the disfigured vessel to move. They whipped around him as an exoskeleton that commanded the knight's movement.

'How is this even possible...'

Here and there, yellow flowers budded from the vines, and they rustled, rustled, as though whispering tales of the imminent doom.

A ragged breath stuck in Cassio's throat, and for a moment, the rustle of flowers parted before the thunder of blood rushing through his temples.

'React, adapt, act!'

Without waiting for his nemesis to get up from his knees, Cassio turned around and dashed in the only direction left. He didn't spare a glance at the pillars looming at the periphery of his vision: if even the ceiling's collapse couldn't destroy the knight, nothing would suffice.

He only ran as fast as he could, stumbling a few times on the way due to the foreign speed of his new body, picking himself up, and running again – away, away from the indestructible knight and floral vines controlling his limbs.

The world turned into a blur of pale blue. Cassio was suffocating, feeling whips of flames licking the insides of his lungs, but he couldn't stop. Fear throbbed in his chest and pushed him forward, but at the same time, his mind didn't bear the denial that would weigh down any other normal human.

'Adapt!'

This actorship commandment seared into Cassio's consciousness like a glowing stamp that allowed him to fully accept the absurdities of this new reality, where the rustle of flowers was not the affection of an audience but an envoy of death. He adapted to this new stage like he always did. Now was the time for the greatest performance of his career, where failure meant death.

And so he ran and ran until exhaustion snatched away the ground from under his feet and flung him face-down. Panting in hoarse wheezes, Cassio remained motionless for a few long moments until he caught his breath again.

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Straining his uninjured arm, he pushed himself up into a sitting position and peered dazedly into the end of the mine he had come from. There, flickering under the gem's glow, trotted the knight – this time without his longsword. He dragged his body forth, and wild vines wriggled around him in a frenzied dance.

To Cassio's dismay, the knight looked much steadier than he was before, and the state of his body was improving with each second. Soon, the knight's trot turned into a sluggish slow jog.

'Is he regenerating? How is it fair?'

Only then did Cassio look down on his left arm, which was torn and washed in blood. The gruesome sight of it brought back the stabbing pain Cassio had been bottling up for so long, but behind this agony hid another sensation, very subtle and almost indiscernible. The itching.

Cold sweat ran down Cassio's back. Where the flesh dangled loosely and exposed the bones, thin thorny vines were wriggling around. They peeked from under his flesh, at first cautiously, like vigilant snakes, but then with a nauseous audacity. Cassio watched their chaotic dance, unable to look away. He wanted to scream, but his throat constricted so tightly that he couldn't produce even a rale.

Cassio grabbed the vines with his right hand and tried to tear them off, but then the stabbing pain slashed through his arm – pulling those vines felt like yanking his blood vessels. No matter how hard he pulled, no matter how much his efforts shredded his arm from within, the vines didn't yield and their spikes only scratched his other hand. Panting hoarsely, Cassio let go of the vines and cried out in terror:

"Why?! How?!"

Cassio snapped his jaws shut. He trembled at the realization that these dark ashen vines had been scourging his body from the very beginning – the strange tattoo he had witnessed earlier wasn't a tattoo at all.

The memories of his first moments in this world erupted next, pushing up to his mind's surface the torture of millions of worms crawling inside him. And after that, the petals on his eyelids and under his feet...

'Does it mean... that this body belonged to one of those bloomed people?'

Cassio felt his stomach twirl, and he couldn't guess whether it was the blame of his fear or the grey vines.

'Are they spread throughout my whole body?! Are there going to be flowers blossoming out of my eyes?!'

His ribcage tightened with each question and now screaked like it was going to burst any moment or be ground into dust by the thorny vines.

Cassio suddenly felt like a mere bodysuit for this corrupted parasite, the vessel for its voracious cravings. He imagined his rotting body roaming around the cave with a euphoric smile and buds breaking his teeth. No... not his body anymore – the skin costume of the vines.

He shot up to his feet and began sprinting, faster, faster, as though trying to escape himself, defy the vine's infesting authority. It was the only thing he could do – run, taut and release the muscles, feel with his mind every joint, assure that he alone was the lord of this body. It was his last desperate protest against the hegemony of the blooming parasite: he had worn countless attires from different eras but couldn't bear being the skin attire himself.

Cassio suddenly tripped over his foot and plummeted to the ground once again.

'It is... in my brain...'

Cassio remembered that all those vines – or at least the majority of them – had wriggled through his limbs into his head. Was it he who was remembering this? Or had those vines already eaten his brain and created these memories themselves? Was he even alive now or was it just an illusion concocted by the vines?

Questions and guesses were spinning in Cassio's head, clouding his vision and knocking out air from his lungs. The dread of being completely possessed by corrupted vines far surpassed the fear of death.

Cassio suddenly felt the vines unfurling out from his head, squeezing through his muscles, ripping his aortas and veins, scratching out his eyes, and grinding his teeth into powder – and then, the bloody flowers blossoming out of his skin.

He felt it so vividly, so thoroughly, tortured by the hellish sensation of his body being shredded to pieces. How was he still alive? How was he still able to see? Was it just his imagination all along?

The world slowly withered away. Nothing seemed real.

*Thump, thump, thump*

Cassio heard in-between the entangled screams of his mind.

*Thump, thump, thump*

Only the hectic drumming of his heart brought Cassio back to his senses.

*Thump, thump, thump*

With bated breath, he listened to it as prophets might have listened to God's revelations. He relished every beat, savoring it like a sweet nectar after weeks of thirst.

'React, adapt, act...'

These words anchored his thoughts with indestructible chains. He was still himself, for he could improvise. He was still alive, for he could act. Cassio was still playing a role. He couldn't eradicate those vines right now, he couldn't prove the reality he perceived, and thus the only option left was to believe and perform. Even if his every decision was a mirage painted by the vines in his brain, he still had a role to perform. He always had.

'Perform.'

Not a single word had ever carried more potency for Cassio – neither 'mother' nor 'father', neither 'life' nor 'death' had he spoken with such love and despair. He repeated it over and over in a mantra, and these two flowing syllables, each cushioned by the caress of 'r', soothed him like a lullaby.

To perform – this was the only thing Cassio knew how to do, and he did it every time he was lost, scared, betrayed, loved, adored, celebrated. Cassio once again accepted the absurd horror of his situation. He once again accepted his new stage.

After calming down a bit, Cassio forced himself to look at his left arm: the grey vines were slowly picking up his flesh and pulling it back in place. Miniscule white petals then sprouted from them and dissipated into invisible seams that sewed Cassio's flesh and skin together.

'They are mending me?'

The rate at which the vines healed Cassio's arm was immeasurably slow, and it would probably take weeks for it to heal that way. The scratched right hand, with which he pulled the thorny vines before, had already been healed.

'I am not a bloomed yet. I can still perform.'

Forcing out a jerky breath, he shifted his focus back to the jogging knight, who had already gained some speed and now was reducing the remaining distance between them to only a few dozen meters. Cassio wobbled up to his feet, watching the knight's approach.

"We could be soulmates! After all, we share a similar inner world!"

He shouted to his taciturn nemesis, receiving only silence in response. Cassio put a shaky grin on his face, turned around, and began running. The greatest performance of his life must go on.