Elora didn’t remember falling asleep.
But the wind against her face wasn’t from a fan. It was colder than anything in her room. It carried the scent of iron, ash, and something floral — like roses that had grown in the dark too long.
She stood barefoot again, this time in dirt.
A garden stretched before her.
Not neat rows. Not cultivated.
Wild. Untamed.
And wrong.
The soil pulsed, faintly glowing under a silver fog.
Petals bloomed from thick, dark vines that slithered instead of stood.
Each flower — if you could call them that — had no center.
Just rows of tiny, ivory teeth where a stamen should be.
Some chattered. Some hummed.
One snapped shut as she passed, spitting something black into the dirt.
“Elora,” a voice whispered again — this time from the garden itself.
She followed it.
Her hands brushed aside vines that recoiled from her touch.
Each step felt heavy, like the ground was remembering her footsteps.
At the center of the garden stood a stone table.
Covered in moss and something reddish.
And on it —
A leather-bound journal.
It had no title.
But she knew it was hers.
Not because she remembered writing in it.
But because the inside cover had her name carved over and over, bleeding into the paper like old wounds reopening.
She flipped to the first page.
“The story begins here. Don’t forget the way out. If you write the wrong ending, he will find you.”
The handwriting shifted between her own and something not quite human.
Page after page filled itself as she read.
One sentence stood out, scrawled over and over:
“You buried the truth here. But it still has teeth.”
Suddenly the vines tightened around her ankles.
The flowers screamed.
Elora tried to move, but the garden gripped her.
Behind her, footsteps.
Slow. Heavy.
Not human.
She turned —
And saw herself.
But not herself.
Eyes black.
Smile too wide.
Hands stained with ink.
The figure whispered:
“You shouldn’t have remembered.”
Then the journal slammed shut on its own.
The garden vanished.
And Elora woke up with dirt under her fingernails.
And a pressed petal on her pillow — soft, purple… with a single baby tooth curled in the center.
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