The storm soaked cemetery sandstone into swamp hues. Ayla's boot sank in mud reeking of ferrous humus. Those black roses bloomed unnaturally—petal edges gleaming like knife blades, thorns spiraling skyward against gravity, tips beaded with cerulean droplets.
(Thorns reversed direction upon touching the third stem, injecting her palm. Blood snaked up corkscrew grooves, crystallizing into microfilm projections)
Mold from a twenty-year-old cell flooded her retina. Teenage Lucas hung from chains, left scapula sizzling under a branding iron. Odile's stiletto crushed plaster dust in his palm—shards of a stolen portrait of five-year-old Ayla.
"Untrainable hounds deserve markings." Odile twisted the iron handle, filling the chamber with scorched pine. "Next time you hoard trash, I'll replace your spinal sensors with incendiaries."
Ayla's nails dug into thorn clusters. As blood dripped, the entire garden shuddered. Skyward thorns rearranged into Morse code grooves—long thorns as dashes, short as dots—spelling "Forgive me". The terminal thorn bush erupted, spraying cerulean mist that solidified into a hologram of Lucas' back, fresh burns oozing black rose sap.
"Don't look..." Lucas' voice seeped from plane tree shadows, his prosthetic hands gripping her wrists—left blazing, right tomb-cold.
Eric's watch chain ensnared a falling rose, gears crushing three thorns: "Young Master's romance bleeds. I taught him the auxin concentration algorithm for these thorns ."
Ayla ripped Lucas' shirt open. Rain sluiced crosshatched scars, the newest welt squirming—black rose roots emerged皮下, petals revealing Odile's script: "Traitors bloom eternally." When her palm pressed the scars, roots retracted to form her mother's specimen code: No.21.
(A music box spring snapped in the crypt, warping into Odile's youthfuneral hymn)
Lucas collapsed, cerulean steam venting from spinal ports. Ayla's hand was trapped against his chest—not mechanical pulses, but flesh-and-blood tremors. Thorns reformed into Eric's watch engravings edged with "1988.3.17"—Lucas' birthdate, twelve years pre-Ayla.
"Your body heat..." His rose-smeared finger traced her clavicle. "...synchronizes with these thorns' inverse growth cycle."
As Odile's perfume merged with grave stench, the last three roses detonated. Petal shards hologrammed her mother placing infant Ayla in an incubator—beside teenage Lucas post-spinal surgery, black rose stems protruding from festering wounds.