The boy with storm-gray eyes found the rose first.
It grew at the forest's edge, crimson petals glistening with dew. He crouched, curiosity outweighing his mother's warnings about wildflowers. A thorn pricked his finger, and for a heartbeat, the world shifted—a flash of golden veins, a woman's scream, a name (Kael) that tasted like ash and honey.
"Jaren!" His mother's voice shattered the vision. "Leave that alone!"
He obeyed, but the thorn's sting lingered. That night, he dreamed of a man with his face, bleeding gold into the soil.
In the village, the girl who loved sunlit flowers paused mid-sip from the well. The water rippled, reflecting not her face, but a woman with amber eyes and scars like poetry. "Find the rose," the reflection whispered. "Before it finds you."
She spilled the bucket, trembling. The villagers called it a trick of the light.
They were wrong.
The scholar with Gideon's mind but gentler hands unearthed an ancient text in the ruins of a forgotten chapel. Its pages crumbled at his touch, but not before he read the final line:
"The Seed sleeps, but never dies. Guard the vault. Guard the thief."
He dismissed it as myth.
He shouldn't have.
Deep in the forest, the rose bloomed a second bud. And so time whispered again, patient and hungry, as the meadow held its breath.