Nepenthia Thornweave's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Thornweave came back inside and stopped at the door. The air felt wrong. Thicker. Sweeter. The unknown flower on the mirrored stand pulsed slow blue light. Around it, the thirty-seven specimens stood taller than she had left them. Leaves she knew by name had darkened. Stems she had measured last week now pressed against their glass. Nothing was dying. Everything was changing. She stepped closer and saw the haze. A faint green dust drifted along the floor in soft patches, pooling under each pot. The spores glowed where her boots passed through them. She traced the path back to the flower. Every specimen the haze touched had grown. None had wilted. Her catalog was rewriting itself in real time, and she was breathing the same air. Thornweave moved fast. She dragged a reinforced steel chamber from the back of the greenhouse, the one she had built for specimens she could not yet trust. Heavy locks. Thick glass. She sealed the unknown flower inside and watched the haze stop spreading at the door. Then she carried the thirty-seven changed specimens to a tall stone pedestal carved with thirty-seven niches. One by one she set them in their new places, stronger than before, ranked behind a flower she had just locked away. She stood back. The pedestal glowed faintly under their leaves. The chamber hummed shut. She had contained the source, but the change was already done. Her collection was no longer the one she had built. It was the one the flower had made.