Snowstorms hit Elowen Ridge with an unusual fury that winter.
The weather matched the tension that brewed beneath the surface—brittle and cold, ready to snap. Every gust of wind seemed to howl a warning, and every crack of ice on rooftops echoed the pressure in Sera's chest.
The Council hadn't given up.
Not even after the failure of their last attempt.
They had merely gone quiet.
And quiet, Sera knew, was more dangerous than rage.
It began with power outages.
Again.
But this time, only the houses closest to the greenhouse were affected. Including Lina's, Mira's, and Sera's own cottage.
Mira wasn't surprised.
"They've hired someone," she said flatly, rubbing her gloved hands together as they huddled around a makeshift fireplace. "This isn't coincidence. They're isolating us."
"For what?" Lina whispered.
"Whatever their last move is," Sera replied. "They're cutting us off before they strike."
They stocked candles. Batteries. Dried food. Mira insisted they sleep in shifts. Lina sketched sigils into the corners of the house. Sera tended to the garden, even when her fingers went numb from the cold.
The golden sprouts hadn't died.
They had, in fact, grown stronger—now a full ring of glowing stems encircling the Rotflowers. Like sentinels.
But something else had appeared in the garden too.
A hole.
Not natural.
A perfect circle, wide and dark, where snow refused to gather.
Sera found it one morning. No tracks around it. No sign of entry or exit.
Just a void.
Breathing.
Waiting.
The Council's "official" visit came during the heaviest snow of the season.
Judge Everly returned, but this time, she wasn't alone.
Men in long coats followed her, carrying heavy tools—saws, axes, and bags Sera instinctively knew weren't meant for gardening.
"This is a legal mandate," Everly said, voice loud enough to draw a crowd. "The greenhouse is to be dismantled immediately. It has been deemed a public hazard. The land will be rezoned for preservation."
"You mean for burial," Mira spat. "You always come back with a shovel."
Everly didn't blink. "Step aside."
But Sera didn't.
And neither did Lina.
Nor Mira.
Nor the thirty townspeople who had quietly gathered behind them.
Women.
Mothers.
Daughters.
Artists.
Queer couples.
Old men who remembered the fire but never spoke.
Young girls who had dreams they didn't understand yet.
They stood shoulder to shoulder in the snow, a wall of breath and memory.
"No," Sera said. "This land remembers. We remember. You don't get to bury what you tried to burn."
Everly stepped forward. "We are the law."
"No," Mira replied, raising a hand toward the garden, "this is the law now."
The earth split.
Not violently.
Not with terror.
But with purpose.
That dark hole widened behind the greenhouse. Golden light poured from its depths, revealing vines that glowed like veins. Flowers bloomed along its edges—strange, celestial, unlike anything the garden had produced before.
Rotflowers flanked it like guardians, their thorns gleaming.
And then—
Celeste stepped out.
Not a ghost.
Not flesh, either.
Something between.
Translucent. Glowing. Her white dress danced with starlight. Her eyes held galaxies.
The crowd gasped.
Everly dropped her papers.
Celeste spoke, her voice layered like wind through leaves:
"You silenced me.
You buried me.
But I bloomed through rot.
And now, you will remember."
A wind rose from the garden.
Not cold.
Not warm.
A truthful wind.
It wrapped around Everly and her men, lifting the snow into spirals. Their tools fell from their hands. Their eyes widened—not in terror, but in sudden, sharp clarity.
And Sera saw it then:
What Celeste had always been.
Not just a woman.
Not just a memory.
But a root of resistance. A seed of every silenced story. A guardian of truths too painful to say aloud.
She was the bloom that refused to die.
Everly dropped to her knees.
Not in surrender.
In grief.
Because the truth is, even villains remember what they buried.
Especially when it grows back, stronger.
Mira knelt beside her—not to gloat, but to bear witness.
And the wind whispered again:
"No more burning.
Only blooming."
By dawn, the Council was gone.
All their permits, laws, and silence—washed away in the storm of memory.
The townspeople rebuilt the garden paths with salt and stone. The greenhouse was reinforced, its glass lined with stories—Lina's drawings, Sera's journals, the names of every girl who had ever been silenced.
The golden ring of blooms became known as The Petal Circle.
No one touched them.
They glowed constantly, especially when someone approached with pain in their heart.
The void in the back of the garden remained.
Not as a threat.
But as a doorway.
Only Celeste knew where it led.
And she never said.
On the first clear day of the new year, Sera opened her studio again.
She hadn't painted in months.
But now, she had a vision.
A canvas taller than her. Broad strokes of shadow and gold. The garden, blooming through snow. And in the middle, a girl made of roots and stars, holding a bloom to her chest.
When she finished it, she titled it simply: Truth.
And hung it on the wall where everyone could see it.
Because the last trial had come.
And the bloom had survived.
Not through fire.
But through remembrance.