Adrian stepped deeper into the forest, and the figure ahead slipped further between the trees—almost swallowed by the dark.
Moonlight thinned under the canopy, filtered through branches like a fading blade of silver. The air shifted colder.

He slowed, then stopped.

A faint blue flicker pulsed ahead—so weak it could have been imagined if not for the way it steadied for a heartbeat, then blinked again.

Adrian tilted his head slightly.

The light wasn’t coming from above.
It was from the ground.

He crouched, pushed aside a thin layer of leaves—careful, controlled—and the source revealed itself:

a tiny glowing blue fungi.

It stands out against the darkness of the forest floor like a fragment of the sky fallen to earth. With the quiet assurance of someone who has done this many times, Adrian reaches into his pouch and pulls out a small vial. Carefully, he pours a drop of the special chemical into the bottom of the vial to preserve the fungus’s delicate structure. He gently maneuvers his gloved fingers to extract it, placing the glowing specimen inside the vial with a soft click.

This is it.

The Celestial Bloom. Not a myth, not a half-written footnote buried in field journals and forgotten studies, but a living, active phenomenon—real, precise, unfolding in front of him with rules it has never revealed to anyone else.

Adrian exhaled slowly through his nose, and for the first time in years, he felt it—something stirring beneath the surface of his usual composure. A deep, electric thrill of something rare. The puzzle that had haunted him since childhood was no longer hidden. It had bloomed, unprovoked, and landed gently into his hands.

~ 30 minutes earlier — Mira’s side ~

The moon was too bright.

Mira lay awake, unable to settle, and before she realized what she was doing, she was already sitting up — feet touching the cold floor, camera in hand. She didn’t remember making a decision. Her body had moved before her thoughts caught up. When she glanced at her screen, it was already close to midnight.

By then she was already outside.

A pale green shimmer drifted ahead, light as a wingbeat across the lawn — like a fairy-winged moth guiding her forward. Whether she was following it for a photo or simply because her eyes refused to look away, she couldn’t say.

All she knew was that her steps carried her across the last line of neatly trimmed hedges.

Leaves crackled beneath her boots, the scent of damp moss and old wood curling around her like breath. With every step, the world behind her seemed to fall away, swallowed by the hush.

The light shifted, softening at the edges, bending into something dreamlike. The trees rose like cathedral pillars, their bark veined with faintly glowing silver, as though the forest itself bore a nervous system of light. Bioluminescent fungi bloomed at their feet in quiet constellations, pulsing with the rhythm of unseen tides. And in the canopy above, tiny motes of light drifted—not like fireflies, but slower and thoughtful, as if they had somewhere specific to be.

The whole forest felt alive. 

She adjusted her lens, eyes narrowing on a bloom nestled in the tangled roots of an ancient tree.

Blue-white. Luminous. Its gills delicate as lace, exhaling a faint shimmering mist into the hush.

Her pulse quickened. She crouched, holding her breath, steadying her hands for the perfect shot.

Click.

The instant the shutter snapped, the fungus reacted. A puff of luminescent spores burst into the air.

Mira gasped, stumbling back—but it was too late.

The glittering dust swirled around her like a living thing. Her vision blurred, distorted—the forest seemed to warp, stretch—or was it her?

A rush of dizziness slammed into her, weightlessness gripping her limbs.

She tried to move, but her body wasn’t responding the way it should.

The trees—
They weren’t stretching.
They were growing.

No.

No, she was shrinking.