Beneath the city, there is a garden no one remembers.
It grows without sunlight.
It sings without sound.
It hungers.
---
Location: Westbridge Woods – Periphery of the City
Amelia crouched beside the tree trunk, fingers tracing the bark. The spiral wasn't carved—it had grown naturally, embedded in the rings like a fingerprint of time itself.
Alexis scanned the surroundings. The entire grove felt off. No wind. No birds. Just a faint smell of rot beneath the moss.
"Why here?" Alexis asked.
Amelia pointed to the roots. Beneath the soil, exposed by recent rains, was a human jawbone. Clean. Polished. Curled into a spiral.
"There's something under this forest," Amelia whispered. "Something old."
They began to dig.
---
Flash Memory – Alexis, Age 12
A greenhouse. Locked. Her mother forbade her to enter.
But one day, she had.
Inside: a spiral of vines that had bloomed in perfect geometry, pulsing faintly.
In the center stood a man with no face.
He whispered her name.
Then everything burned.
She never told anyone.
Until now.
---
Back to Present – Underground Root-Chamber
They reached a hollow space, deep beneath the roots. The air was wet and sweet, like overripe fruit.
And inside—an altar made of bone and vine. Symbols drawn in mold across the stone. In the center:
A spiral flower.
White petals rimmed with black. It was alive. Breathing.
Amelia reached for it. Her hand shook. The moment her fingers touched the petals—
Visions.
Flashes of a hidden world:
People with bark for skin, eyes like sap.
A tree growing from a man's spine, splitting him open.
Children buried beneath roots, whispering truths to worms.
Then: darkness.
And a voice.
> "The earth remembers.
The spiral is not a symbol.
It is a seed."
---
They pulled away. But something followed.
The vines around the chamber began to move. Slowly, hungrily.
Alexis grabbed Amelia's wrist and they ran, the walls of root tightening behind them like lungs exhaling. When they burst back into the surface air, the forest no longer smelled like rot.
It smelled like growth.
Too fast. Too much.
The trees had changed.
And watching from between the trunks:
The Hollow Man.
His silhouette framed by twisting branches.
He raised his hand—and all the birds in the forest fell silent at once.