The garden

**Kelly Thompson's POV**

The sprout’s golden leaves aren’t leaves—they’re *eyes*.

Talin doesn’t notice at first. He tends to the plant with a devotion that borders on obsession, whispering to it like a child to a wounded bird. The others keep their distance, even Ravel, her storm-wolf pup’s death still raw. But I see it—the way the sprout’s gilded foliage tracks movement, pupils dilating in sunlight, narrowing when Talin turns his back.

“It’s learning,” he insists, brushing his fingers over a leaf. It curls around his wrist, veins pulsing faintly. “It doesn’t want to hurt us.”

Ravel spits into the campfire. “Tell that to Lirin.”

The pup’s absence is a phantom limb. Its den, a hollow in the dirt, still smells of ozone and burnt fur.

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**The Fractured Sky**

By dawn, the cracks return. Not green this time, but gold—radiating from the sprout like spider silk. They don’t bleed light. They *drink* it. The horizon dims, twilight clinging to the field long after sunrise.