The Thistle of Envy

The soil did not smell of damp earth and decay, but of ozone and old, forgotten regrets. Elara knelt in the loam, her fingers stained a bruised violet from the midnight planting. Before her lay the silken sachets, each one containing a single, pulsing grain that hummed against her palm.

She reached for the bag marked *Longing*. It felt warm, like a fevered brow. She pressed it into the dirt, smoothing the earth with a reverence that bordered on prayer. The garden was her only inheritance, a patch of shifting shadows behind the crumbling stone walls of Oakhaven.

But then, her hand brushed the small, jagged pouch tucked at the bottom of the crate. It was cold. Unnaturally so. It vibrated with a frantic, rhythmic thrum, like a trapped bird beating its wings against a cage.

The label was scrawled in ink that seemed to weep: *Jealousy*.

She should have buried it deep, beneath the roots of the weeping willow, or cast it into the black well. Instead, driven by a curiosity that felt more like a compulsion, she pressed the seed into the shallowest bed of silt.

The moon dipped behind a cloud. A sound like tearing silk sliced through the silence.

Elara gasped, recoiling as the earth buckled.

Long, obsidian thorns erupted from the dirt with a violent, wet crunch, twisting toward the sky like hungry fingers. They did not grow; they hunted.

By the time the light returned, the garden was no longer hers. ...

It was a fortress of spite.