As the seasons passed, Sadie gathered her courage for a new calling. One that felt like its own siren song, compelling her along a new path of purpose.

She ranged deeper and deeper into the Darkwood, once more seeking the nameless flower of blue and gold. She learned where they grew. Stubbornly, defiantly, from the wasting flesh of the Darkwood's lost creatures, called so violently home by the ferrifae. They bloomed only a day before withering to stalks.

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Sadie felt victory each time the petals yielded to her bone knife. She gathered them all in a jar, a writhing mass of gold and vengeful blue.

She sought out spirits and collected their bones. She held her jar of flowers aloft, a lone lantern in the dim night of deepest Darkwood, warding away the song of sirens.

The spirits of creatures followed behind their flesh as Sadie beckoned them, a lamenting procession yearning for life, until they slipped past the threshold. Beyond the keening grasp of the Darkwood's bleeding heart, the spirits fell peacefully away, returning to the earth just as their flesh must.