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Chapter Eight: The Garden Knows Our Names

I. The Return to Ash.

The ruins of Blackthistle hadn’t aged.
They had… shifted.

The crumbled pillars had grown wild with violet briars, their thorns curved like handwriting. The ballroom floor, once broken marble, was now cracked open to expose the roots beneath—thick and dark, pulsing faintly like veins.

Thorne stepped over the threshold first. Briar followed, the wind catching her cloak like spilled ink.

“You hear them?” she asked.

“Every one of them,” Thorne answered. “They remember who we were.”

Not a single crow cawed.

Not a single tree stirred.

It was as if the entire estate held its breath… waiting for the Witnesses to speak.

II. The Curse Speaks Back.

Briar knelt beside the rose-bed that had once housed the secret altar. The soil pulsed warm beneath her fingers.

“This is where they fed me,” she whispered.

“This is where they ended me,” Thorne added.

But beneath the ground, something moved.

Not violent. Not cruel.

Curious.

Roots split. Earth moaned. And from the soil rose a single bloom—black, feathered, and humming with memory.

Briar reached for it—

—and heard a voice that wasn’t hers:

“You made me with your grief.
Now ask me what you are.”

III. The Garden Is Sentient.

The curse had never lived in the manor.

It lived in the land itself.

The garden was the original altar—older than the house, older than the Elwoods. The Witnesses weren’t meant to trap evil.

They were meant to listen to what the land remembered.

And the land remembered everything.

Every blood rite. Every lie. Every time an Elwood heir turned pain into inheritance.

The ground hadn't been cursed.

It had been guarding the truth.

IV. The Book of Names.

In the stone remnants of the west wing, Briar discovered a vault beneath the fireplace—sealed by touch, now unlocked by hers.

Inside: a book.

Bound in stitched vellum. No title.

Just one word on the first page: “Names.”

Thousands of them.

Witnesses who came before Throne. Girls who touched the altar and vanished. Women who were erased to protect a bloodline. Men who gave their names to protect secrets.

Briar’s fingers landed on her mother’s entry:

Mirena Elwood — kissed the Witness, wept at the garden, silenced by poison.

And beside it, Thorne's true name:

Thorne Elwood — born twin to the root, made mortal to forget, remembered by kiss.

He gasped behind her.

“I was never just a vessel.”

“You were the soul they didn’t want born.”

V. The Third Witness Lives.

As the sun dipped below the ruined gables, Briar saw her.

A girl.

No older than twelve. Standing barefoot in the ashes. Hair white as frost. Eyes solid black.

“That’s not possible,” Thorne whispered.

“We never saw the last page,” Briar said.

The garden had a third soul buried deep—Vellith's twin.

The original Witness had never truly dissolved. When Briar kissed Thorne, when they bound the curse with love, it awakened not just memory…

…but prophecy.

The child stared at them and whispered:

“One of you must stay. One of you must leave.
And I will remember the one who bleeds.”

VI. The Choice.

The garden demanded balance.

To unbind the original pact was not enough.

The root needed a keeper.

One soul to stay.

One soul to forget.

And one to begin again.

Briar reached for Thorne’s hand.

“It should be me.”

“I won’t let you sacrifice,” he began—

But she silenced him.

“No. Listen. Really listen. I’m already fading. Half of me belongs to Vellith. The other half is yours. But you… you're whole again. You were never just the prison. You are the seed.”

The child watched, silent as rain.

The rosebush behind her bloomed with blood.

VII. Briar Is Not Leaving.

As Thorne prepared to offer himself—

Briar stepped backward—

And vanished into the garden.

Not dead.

Replanted.

The soil folded over her gently.

No scream.

Just a soft gasp, and her name written in violet petals at the base of a new white tree.

The child smiled. Turned to Thorne.

“You’ll forget none of it. You’ll sing her name. But she’ll sleep now… with the rest of us.”

VIII. One Year Later.

Thorne tends the garden now.

People call him the keeper, the mad poet, the widowed Witness. He smiles at them gently.

But in spring, when the white tree blooms…

…the flowers hum with Briar’s voice.

And somewhere inside the garden, the roots know her name.

They whisper it still:

Briar.
Briar.
Briar.

~TO BE CONTINUED....🥀🖤🌿

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Razel.am

I don’t walk in the light. I make shadows kneel. Blood-inked thoughts, velvet rage, and a kiss that knows your secrets before you speak them.