The roots were moving.
Not growing. Moving.
Lina saw it first—while they were out near the north edge of Sera's property, where the wild hedges brushed the forest line. The earth had cracked in thin, trembling lines, as if something underneath were pushing upward.
"Is this normal?" she asked, crouching beside a narrow rut.
Sera pressed her fingers into the soil. Closed her eyes.
"No," she whispered. "They're not growing toward light. They're growing toward me."
Later that day, she returned to the greenhouse ruins alone.
The wind had gone still, but the silence was not peaceful—it was loaded, the way a storm holds its breath before breaking.
Sera knelt by the basin again, placed both hands inside, and invited the memory.
It hit harder this time.
A flood of sound and scent and sensation. Screaming voices. Blood on glass. A girl running barefoot through thorned paths, clutching a baby wrapped in petals.
Celeste.
She was fleeing someone—something.
The scene shifted.
The greenhouse—intact again—stood blazing in moonlight. Men in uniforms, torches raised, surrounded it.
They weren't afraid of her gift. They wanted to use it.
Celeste had refused.
So they buried it.
Buried her.
And buried the truth.
Sera shot awake gasping, her skin slick with cold sweat. Her arms were trembling.
When she looked down, her palms were streaked with dirt... and blood.
Real.
Sticky.
Fresh.
"Someone's warning us," Lina said when Sera told her everything.
"No," Sera replied. "They're threatening us. There's a difference."
She opened Mira's journal again. This time, she found a pressed red lily labeled Wrath. Underneath was a scrawled entry:
"If they find the girl, they'll silence the garden again. The blood-soaked roots don't forget. And they always bloom back."
The warning was clear.
This had happened before.
And someone had always tried to stop it.
They began researching the town's oldest families—particularly those who were present when Celeste vanished. One name came up again and again:
The Harthmores.
Lina frowned. "That's the mayor's family."
"And the current mayor's garden club has a private greenhouse," Sera said. "Invitation only."
It clicked.
The Harthmores had tried to erase Celeste—and now they were keeping something locked away.
A secret garden.
A prison of flowers.
Sera knew what she had to do.
"We're going in."
They waited until the full moon. Lina hacked the gate while Sera distracted the club's caretaker with a rare bouquet request.
What they found inside the greenhouse was not beautiful.
It was grotesque.
Rows of flowers suspended in glass tanks. Roots pulsing unnaturally. Each labeled with words: Obedience, Grief Extract, Control, Submission.
Sera's breath hitched.
They were breeding emotion.
Bottling it.
Selling it.
Or worse—injecting it.
And in the back, under a dome of frost-covered glass, was a single bloom.
Pitch black. Thorned. Frozen mid-bloom.
Etched into the case: "Subject Zero – Celeste's Heart."
Sera reached out.
The glass cracked at her touch.
And inside, the flower trembled—as if sensing her presence.
The frost melted instantly, and the bloom slowly began to open.
Petal by petal.
Until at the center bloomed a tiny red core.
It pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
Then—
BOOM.
The glass exploded.
Black petals rained down.
The greenhouse groaned.
And from the center of the broken dome, a voice echoed:
"She's awake."
Sera and Lina stood frozen as the air shimmered with magic long buried.
The past wasn't buried.
It had simply been waiting for spring.