The morning after the attack, the town looked like it had been shaken awake from a nightmare it didn't want to admit.
The square—normally a place where people drank coffee, shopped, or cut across on the way to school—was now cordoned off with yellow tape. Cracks webbed across the pavement, filled with something like glass that had cooled mid-melt. A whole streetlamp had been wrapped in calcified vine, twisted until its metal bent like wax.
People stood behind the tape, murmuring, filming with their phones.
Eren stood among them, hood pulled up, backpack slung low. His eyes went straight to the cracks. He knew what had caused them. He could still feel the hum of the Garden in his chest if he stood still long enough.
Beside him, Talia chewed on the edge of her sleeve. "They're calling it a gas explosion," she muttered. "Seriously. A gas explosion. That's their story."
"It's not a story," Eren said softly. "It's a cover."
She shot him a sharp look. "You don't sound surprised."
"I'm not. You think anyone's going to believe what really happened? That the greenhouse threw a tantrum and decided to bleed into Main Street?"
"Would you listen to yourself?" She tugged on his hood to make him look at her. "Eren. People got hurt. Two kids in the hospital. Mrs. Hawkins almost got her leg crushed. And you're—what? Shrugging? Saying it's fine because your ghost-girl whispered in your ear again?"
He flinched. "That's not what I'm saying."
"It's what it sounds like."
A man in a suit—government type, judging by the clean shoes and grim face—stepped under the tape, followed by two officers. He crouched beside the streetlamp, running gloved fingers over the vine's husk.
Talia nudged Eren. "See? Not just local cops. These guys are here to sweep it under the rug. Which means this is bigger than either of us."
Eren's eyes lingered on the man in the suit. "Or it means they already know."
---
At school, the whispers were worse.
"Did you see it?"
"My cousin swears the ground moved."
"They said vines wrapped around a car."
"No, my uncle said it was just fire. You're all exaggerating."
Eren barely lasted two periods before the noise got too much. He ducked into the library, sinking into the furthest corner. The silence helped. Sort of.
He pulled his grandmother's old journal from his bag. He'd found it tucked in the attic after last night, after he couldn't sleep. Its leather cover was worn soft, the pages yellowed. Inside, the handwriting looped in sharp, precise strokes.
The first line read:
The Garden breathes when it's hungry.
He stared at the words until his chest tightened.
---
Talia found him an hour later. She dropped her bag onto the desk with a thud. "Hiding from the world?"
"Studying," he said, though the book in his hands wasn't history or math.
She leaned over, squinting at the journal. "Is that…?"
"My grandmother's. She used to look after the greenhouse before it was abandoned."
"Okay," she said slowly. "And what does it say?"
Eren hesitated. "That the Garden is alive. That it chooses people." He flipped a page, showing her lines of sketches—twisted blooms, vines with too many thorns, a flower that looked disturbingly like the silver one they'd seen open. "She knew. All of it."
Talia pressed her lips together. "You're telling me your grandma kept a diary about haunted plants and never mentioned it?"
"She died when I was little. Maybe she was trying to warn me."
"Or maybe she was just crazy."
Eren closed the journal with more force than necessary. "She wasn't crazy."
Talia leaned back, crossing her arms. "Fine. So what does your dead grandma want us to do? Plant daisies? Burn down the greenhouse? Because right now the feds are sniffing around, and half the town thinks we're cursed."
"She wants us to listen." He lowered his voice, almost a whisper. "She writes about someone she called 'the Blooming Girl.' Someone trapped. Someone the Garden bound to itself. I think… I think it's Lyra."
Talia's jaw tightened. "Of course you do."
"Don't you get it? If she was writing about Lyra decades ago, that means Lyra's been in there all this time. Waiting. And now the Garden's waking up again."
---
That night, Eren sat at his desk with the journal open, moonlight pooling over the ink. He traced the lines with his fingertip.
The Garden tests the chosen.
If they break, it consumes them.
If they endure, it obeys.
His hand trembled. He thought of Lyra's eyes, the sadness in them. He thought of her whisper: Closer. Be careful.
The fern on his windowsill shivered again. But this time, it wasn't subtle. Its fronds spread wide, stretching toward him like fingers.
Eren stumbled back, knocking over his chair. The journal fell shut.
From the corner of the room, he heard it—soft, feminine, so faint it could've been wind.
"Closer."
He pressed his back to the wall, chest heaving.
Downstairs, his mother called his name. Just an ordinary sound in an ordinary house.
But Eren knew.
The Garden wasn't just testing him anymore.
It was coming inside.