The dream began in silence.
Elliot stood in the middle of the garden, but everything felt wrong. The trees were too still. The colors were too faded. Lyra stood across from him, her face unreadable, her eyes glowing faintly gold.
"You forgot the soil speaks," she said, her voice hollow. "And now it speaks without your consent."
Then the ground split open like cracked pottery.
Elliot woke with a sharp gasp, the taste of damp earth on his tongue. He sat up, brushing away sweat. The glow-lichens on the wall flickered erratically, as if they too had been disturbed.
A moment later, Lyra entered the main shelter. She looked pale—more than usual—and her expression was tense.
"You too?" she asked.
"Yeah," he breathed. "That wasn't just a nightmare."
They weren't alone. By morning, several creatures in the garden—two moss-dogs, a bramble hare, even the usually emotionless herb-stones—were showing signs of agitation. One of the tree-spirits had retreated into its bark entirely and refused to speak.
Something had blanketed the garden in uneasy sleep.
Elliot and Lyra traced the anomaly to the southeast patch, near the dense fungus beds they had mostly left alone. At the center of a ring of silvercap mushrooms, a new growth had appeared—one they hadn't planted.
It was small and unassuming. A vine-like bulb, pitch black, with leaves shaped like closed eyes. The soil around it felt colder than it should have.
"I didn't put this here," Elliot muttered.
"Neither did I." Lyra crouched down, gently brushing her fingers across the outer layer. The moment her skin touched it, the leaves quivered. She hissed and pulled back. "It's dream-linked."
"That's even a thing?"
She nodded grimly. "Nightroots. They bloom only when emotions in the air become fertile enough to sprout memory. This one didn't grow alone. It was invited."
"By us?" Elliot asked.
"By the garden. Or something deeper beneath it."
They spent the rest of the day in containment efforts. Lyra summoned warding vines and shaped them into a containment ring, while Elliot harvested a set of dream-dampening herbs and scattered their oils through the air. Still, the aura of the Nightroot remained—a weight pressing on the garden's psyche.
By sundown, a ripple of discontent had begun to form. The sunflowers refused to follow the light. The whispergrass hummed too loud. Even the clouds above the garden seemed to hesitate, lingering longer in shadow.
That night, they both slept inside the protective ring of the dreamcatcher tree. And again, the dreams returned.
This time, Elliot dreamed of the garden dying. Not burning or collapsing—just... giving up. One plant at a time, turning to ash in his hands, whispering apologies in voices he recognized.
He woke screaming.
Lyra sat beside him, her own eyes wide. "I saw you vanish. You fell through the soil, and the roots didn't catch you."
They were silent for a long moment.
Then Elliot stood and said, "We're digging it up."
It took hours, and every spadeful of earth felt heavier than it should have. But they finally unearthed the bulb. Its roots writhed faintly in the light like fingers recoiling from truth.
"Burn it?" Lyra asked.
"No," Elliot said. "We listen first."
He knelt beside it, placing his palm on the exposed root. He let his thoughts fall into the same rhythm he used when coaxing seeds to sprout.
And he heard them.
Voices. Dozens. Some familiar—his mother, his old friends—others utterly alien. But they weren't memories. They were regrets. The Nightroot fed not on thoughts, but emotions left unresolved. Guilt, fear, longing.
"It's not an invader," Elliot murmured. "It's a mirror."
Lyra closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. "Then it belongs here. For now. We just need to guide it."
They replanted the bulb in an isolated part of the garden, wrapped in soil taken from the highest hill—soil blessed with fireleaf and dawnpetal ash, both used in calming overactive growth.
Elliot carved a small plaque: Memory should grow, but not rule.
That night, the garden sighed. No dreams came. Only quiet.
In the distance, a few stars blinked to life—just three, far too early for the season. But neither of them mentioned it.
They both understood.
Some dreams were seeds. And some seeds... were waiting to bloom.