Tree of Imagery

An unidentified species of plant first appeared in 2024. It grows in stages no botanist recognizes, sprout, flower, tree, until the bark splits open down the center, revealing a portal to another realm. What waits on the other side is never the same twice. Eon Moonlicht used to walk through those doors for a living. As a Captain of the Scythe Division, he fought in worlds that had no names he was permitted to say aloud, and he kept his team alive the only way he knew how: by taking their wounds into his own body, at double the cost, and paying for it in pieces of himself he was never allowed to keep. A scent. A sound. The memory of a stranger's face. He does not know what he has lost. He only knows the ledger balances. Now he is retired, or something close to it, running a restaurant that does not advertise itself in an alley that does not either, cooking for four customers on a good night and keeping a private, classified accounting of everything he has traded away to stay alive. But the trees are not finished with him. A new one has been confirmed. Classification pending. And some debts, it turns out, come looking for you whether or not you ever agreed to pay them.