It happened at dawn.
No fanfare.
No tremor.
Just a single vine — pale green, veined with gold — rising through a crack in the asphalt, two hundred meters from the nursery.
It didn't lash.
Didn't attack.
Didn't even move fast.
It simply grew.
Curled over the broken yellow line.
Touched the tire of an abandoned car.
Then stopped.
But that was enough.
By noon, the news vans came.
They didn't call it a miracle.
They called it an infestation.
"Mutated Flora Spreads in East District — Authorities Warn of 'Biological Contamination'"
"Experts: Likely System-Induced Corruption. Recommend Immediate Eradication."
They showed footage — grainy, zoomed in — of the vine, motionless, as if it had chosen to stay still.
A voiceover warned of "uncontrolled growth," "neural mimicry," "potential toxicity."
They didn't mention the child who'd been healed.
Or the fact that the vine hadn't harmed anyone.
Or that it had grown toward a dried-up flowerbed — not a house, not a person.
But it had crossed the road.
And that was the crime.
By evening, men in gray uniforms arrived — not Hollow's Purifiers, but Civil Restoration Unit, clean-cut, official, carrying sprayers of chemical mist.
They didn't burn.
They sterilized.
One man knelt, sprayed the vine's tip.
It didn't scream.
It blackened.
Then curled inward — like a hand closing into a fist.
I felt it.
Not pain.
Not in my body.
But in the network.
A jolt, sharp and sudden, like a root torn from stone.
I was already moving.
I reached the scene as they prepared the second spray.
The vine was half-dead, its gold veins fading.
The asphalt around it sizzled with poison.
The lead officer turned — young, clean-shaven, eyes hard with duty.
"Stay back," he said.
"This is a containment zone."
"It's not attacking," I said.
"It's reaching."
"It crossed a public thoroughfare. That's a Class-3 biohazard violation."
He raised the sprayer.
"Nature doesn't get rights in a crisis."
Behind me, Thistle's voice, low in my mind:
"Say the word."
I didn't.
Instead, I knelt.
Not to beg.
Not to threaten.
To connect.
I pressed my palm to the poisoned soil.
And pulled — not on my strength, but on the network.
From the nursery, a surge.
From the sewers, a pulse.
From the buried tree, a groan.
And then —
the asphalt cracked.
Not just at the road.
But in a line, straight back to the nursery —
as if something had been dragging itself forward.
And where the original vine had been sprayed,
ten more rose.
Then twenty.
Then a hundred.
They didn't attack.
They didn't lash.
They simply surrounded the men.
Coiled around their boots.
Wrapped the sprayers.
One even gently lifted a fallen glove and placed it back on a trembling hand.
Silence.
The officer stared, breath shallow.
"You did this."
"No," I said.
"The land did.
I just stopped pretending we're in charge."
He didn't move.
None of them did.
And then — from the crowd that had gathered — a child stepped forward.
The boy I'd healed.
He walked past the officers, past the cameras, and touched the largest vine.
It bent toward him — slow, careful — and offered a single, unblemished leaf.
He took it.
Held it up.
And the crowd went quiet.
Not in fear.
Not in awe.
But in recognition.
The officer lowered his sprayer.
"We're not allowed to leave it," he said.
"Orders."
"Then come back tomorrow," I said.
"And the day after.
But know this —
you can kill a vine.
You can't kill the root.
And the root remembers every scar."
We left.
The vine stayed.
And by morning,
the news changed.
Not much.
Just a little.
"Authorities Delay Eradication — Further Study Required."
But I knew the truth.
This wasn't delay.
It was doubt.
And doubt is where revolutions begin