Elara's thoughts turned to Cassian, to the visions, to the whispers. She felt the question burning behind her lips.
"Can I bring him back?"
The woman hesitated, then shook her head. "No one knows. But if you go far enough into the garden… you might not come back either."
Elara looked at the black flower, heart pounding. Something in her brother's gaze - trapped in that vision - had begged for help.
She clenched her fists.
"I have to try."
The deeper Elara ventured into the garden, the more the city seemed to vanish behind her. The murmurs of passersby faded, replaced by a hum that vibrated beneath her skin - a harmony so low it felt like her bones were listening. The woman who had warned her stayed behind at the edge of the clearing, watching with a silent understanding that Elara was past the point of turning back.
The plants grew wilder here. Vines curled through the air like sentient things, their tendrils twitching when she passed. Some of them emitted soft pulses of light - blue, green, violet - flickering in rhythm with her heartbeat. Elara moved carefully, notebook tucked into her coat pocket, though she knew there would be no way to record this. Science didn't yet have a language for what the garden was.
Her path led to a winding trail that narrowed between towering stalks with lantern-like bulbs, glowing faintly from within. Inside each bulb, there was movement - shadows dancing, shifting, sometimes pressing up against the walls as if trying to get out. She didn't stop to look too long.
Eventually, the soil beneath her feet changed. It turned soft, almost sponge-like, damp with a silver sheen. The air grew warmer, more fragrant, heavy with scents she couldn't name - honey, smoke, and something like memory itself. The garden no longer felt like something growing on Earth, but rather beneath it, beyond it - something ancient that had merely chosen this city as a point of return.
She came to a pool surrounded by moss that shimmered like stars. The water inside was perfectly still, yet reflected nothing of her form. Instead, it showed a hallway - a hallway she recognized. Cassian's old apartment building. The cracked tile. The light that flickered above apartment 4B.
"Cassian?" she whispered.
The pool rippled.
"Elara." His voice was clearer now, not from behind her, not from a flower - but from the water itself.
She knelt beside it, heart pounding. "Where are you?"
The water shifted, the hallway dissolving into a vision of a forest - not the garden, but something older, colder. He stood beneath a great arch of stone, vines crawling over him, his face pale and eyes hollow but alive.
"I'm trapped," he said. "It's not just a garden. It's a gate. And something opened it."
Elara stared at him. "What do you mean? A gate to what?"
He looked behind him, suddenly afraid. The image flickered. "I don't have much time. Don't trust the garden, Elara. It remembers things. It becomes what we grieve. What we fear."
The vision blurred, then refocused - this time, on something moving in the shadows behind him. Not human. Not fully. Elara gasped.
"Cassian!"
Too late.