The mutation

**Kelly Thompson's POV**

The Seeds don’t fall—they *root*.

Each one pierces the earth like a bullet, sprouting into monstrous hybrids of flora and flesh. Trees grow skeletal hands, flowers bloom into screaming mouths, and the air thickens with pollen that glows like emerald fire. The Rootmother watches from her thorned throne, her laughter a chorus of cracking bark and dying gasps.

**“You’ve done well, daughter,”** she says, her voice vibrating in my fungal-riddled bones. **“Now watch your world *bloom*.”**

Nessa kneels beside her, moss weaving through her hair like a crown. She won’t meet my eyes.

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**The Fractured Pact**

Ravel is the first to rise from the Verdant’s garden.

Her body is a grotesque fusion of warrior and rot—fungal armor plates her chest, her veins pulse with black sap, and her eyes are hollowed pits of green flame. She strides toward me, a sword of petrified wood clutched in her clawed hand.