The glass had shattered like a scream.
Petals black as obsidian scattered across the greenhouse floor, each carrying an eerie shimmer that made Sera's skin prickle. The flower—Celeste's Heart, they had called it—lay at the center of the chaos, its core pulsing like it had a heartbeat of its own. Lina stood frozen, her hand gripping Sera's wrist with more force than she realized.
The voice had echoed with impossible clarity.
"She's awake."
"Did you hear that?" Sera whispered, her breath visible in the sudden cold.
"I didn't just hear it," Lina murmured, stepping slowly forward. "I felt it."
Around them, the other flowers inside the Harthmore greenhouse began to react. Petals twitched. Leaves curled inward. Roots twisted visibly beneath the soil, some even cracking the ceramic pots that held them. It was as though the place had been holding its breath for decades—and now, it was exhaling all at once.
Sera reached toward the black bloom.
"Sera, wait—" Lina tried to pull her back.
But her fingers brushed the velvet-soft petal, and suddenly the world fell away.
She stood in the ruins of a different greenhouse now—one that was alive with color and scent and life.
Celeste stood across from her, not a girl this time, but a woman cloaked in wind and shadow. Her hair was white-blonde, almost glowing, and her eyes—those storm-gray eyes—were filled with sadness so profound it made Sera ache.
"You opened it," Celeste said softly. Her voice didn't echo in Sera's ears. It echoed in her bones.
Sera took a step forward. "I had to know. Who you were. What they did to you."
Celeste looked away. "They didn't just kill me. They buried my story. My blood. My roots."
She turned, gesturing toward the wall of the dreamlike greenhouse.
Images shimmered in the air—flashes of moments stitched together like stained glass: Celeste whispering to a garden full of children; a woman with copper curls cradling her face; a line of masked men marching toward a house on fire; a journal thrown into a well.
Then finally—Celeste, her hands outstretched, pushing the black flower into the soil and whispering something that sounded like a goodbye.
"I never wanted vengeance," she said. "Just remembrance."
Sera stepped closer. "Then I'll help you. I'll finish what you started."
Celeste's image flickered.
"Be sure. Because once you begin, you won't be able to stop the bloom."
Sera snapped awake with a gasp, back in the Harthmore greenhouse. The broken glass had melted into water. The petals of the black flower had disappeared, except for one, which now rested on her palm.
It shimmered like starlight.
She looked up to see Lina watching her, worry etched deep across her features. "What did you see?"
"Her," Sera said. "And her grief. And her promise."
The silence stretched, heavy and charged.
Then Lina whispered, "So what happens now?"
Sera looked around the greenhouse. "Now we show the town what they tried to hide."
They left the Harthmore estate before sunrise, weaving through shadowed alleys and cutting across the woods to avoid cameras. The petal still pulsed faintly in Sera's pocket, warming her skin like a tiny ember.
Back at the shop, they gathered every piece of evidence they had—Mira's journals, the strange flower map, the anonymous messages, and now the truth: that the town's oldest family had not only silenced Celeste, but twisted her magic into something they could control and sell.
But something else worried Sera.
Not just the conspiracy—but the way the flowers had responded to her.
Not passively.
Not like a vessel.
Like they were waiting for her.
The following day, news of the greenhouse explosion spread like wildfire—though the mayor's office called it a "minor chemical malfunction."
No one believed it.
And for the first time in generations, people began whispering Celeste Wynn's name again.
Some in fear.
Some in reverence.
And some—like the old woman who showed up at Sera's door with a pressed rose and tear-filled eyes—in gratitude.
"She was my aunt," the woman said, clutching the flower to her chest. "They told us she ran away. But I always felt her in the garden. I thought I was mad."
Sera took her hand.
"You weren't mad," she said gently. "She left echoes behind. I think they're starting to bloom again."
That night, Sera and Lina worked on something new—a wall of memory.
They cleared space on the greenhouse's interior wall and began pinning every message, every drawing, every dried petal and pressed flower with significance. They left space in between, room for what they hadn't yet discovered.
Lina stepped back, arms crossed.
"It's like a living archive," she said.
Sera nodded. "And it's not just for Celeste. It's for every person this town tried to forget."
She paused, then added, "Including Mira."
Lina turned to look at her. "You never talk about what happened that day."
Sera's throat tightened. "Because I can still hear her. Not just in memories. In the flowers."
Lina didn't push. She simply reached out and gently brushed Sera's knuckles with her fingertips.
Sera let her.
For the first time, she didn't feel like she had to carry it all alone.
A few hours past midnight, the ground trembled again.
Just slightly.
But it was enough to wake them both.
Sera stepped outside barefoot, the cool earth tingling beneath her skin. All around the garden, flowers were opening—petals unfolding with almost human-like awareness. They turned in unison to face her.
Then, in the stillness, a single phrase whispered through the leaves, carried on a breeze that had no source.
"She hears you."
Sera stepped closer to the greenhouse and pressed her hand to the wall.
"I hear her too," she whispered back.
And the flowers bowed.
In the coming days, the air in Elowen Ridge grew thick with unease.
People started talking—whispers at markets, glances exchanged at intersections. The mayor's office put out statements denying any involvement with "underground botanical projects." Yet someone from the inside began leaking photos—images of the black flower before it bloomed, records of sales linked to emotional manipulation serums, even coded journal entries from an unnamed Harthmore descendant.
Sera and Lina weren't alone anymore.
And that scared the mayor more than any flower ever could.
But beneath the awakening and the rising truth, something darker stirred.
One night, Sera found a new note nailed to her greenhouse door.
No flowers this time.
Just four words carved in black ink:
"Dig deeper. Or burn."
She didn't flinch.
Instead, she pinned the note on the archive wall.
Right under a photo of Celeste, smiling, unaware her world would be taken from her.
Sera looked at the wall and whispered the girl's name.
"Celeste."
For the first time, the name didn't echo in memory.
It echoed back.
And from the garden, a single new bloom opened—
Blood red.