21
Ash Grove looked emptier than Sassy remembered—an expanse of old farmland reclaimed by weeds and silence. Moonlight washed everything in a sickly gray, catching the edges of broken fence posts and the skeletal remains of barns long collapsed.
Jimmy carried the flashlight. Sassy carried the notebook.
Their footsteps crunched over the dead leaves as they crossed the clearing toward the stand of trees at its center. The grove itself was a ring—thicker, darker, older than the surrounding woods. Sassy stopped at the threshold.
“I’ve been here,” she whispered. “Not physically. But in dreams. Or memories.”
Jimmy tightened his grip on her hand. “You don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.”
She stepped forward anyway.
The air inside the grove felt different—not colder or darker, but heavier.
Sassy closed her eyes. “Something’s beneath us.”
Jimmy swept the flashlight across the ground. Roots knotted through the soil, tangled into shapes that almost resembled symbols.
After several minutes of searching, Jimmy spotted it: a corner of concrete half-swallowed by earth, covered in moss and leaves.
“Here,” he said, kneeling. “Looks like a foundation.”
Sassy helped him clear the debris. Under the moss was a trapdoor—wooden, reinforced with rusted hardware. A faint symbol was etched into the surface, carved by someone who believed they were immortalizing meaning.
The hourglass shape.
Sassy recoiled instinctively. Jimmy steadied her.
“It’s just a carving,” he whispered. “It has no power.”
But it did.
Not supernatural power—
the power of repetition.
Of indoctrination.
Of memory.
Jimmy pulled on the metal ring. The trapdoor open, releasing a wave of stale, earthy air.
He pointed the flashlight into the dark. A narrow set of stairs descended into what looked like a cellar—or something much older.
“You sure?” Jimmy asked.
“No,” Sassy said.
And she stepped down first.
At the bottom of the stairs was a long corridor lined with decayed wood paneling. Sassy’s breath was shallow and fast. Jimmy walked close behind her, the beam of light shaking ever so slightly in his hand.
At the end of the corridor stood a door.
It wasn’t locked.
It wasn’t even fully closed.
Sassy hesitated. “This is it.”
Jimmy touched her back. “Open it.”
Inside was a small room—no bigger than a bedroom. The walls were lined with shelves filled with journals, boxes of documents, lanterns long extinguished. In the center sat a table with wooden chairs arranged around it.
A meeting room.
A teaching room.
A place where beliefs took root.
Sassy circled slowly. The air felt thick with dust and echoes—of voices, of chanting, of fear disguised as devotion.
Jimmy stopped at a shelf and pulled a folder marked:
EARLY BLOOMS — RANKING & READINESS
Sassy’s stomach lurched. “They graded children.”
Jimmy opened the folder. Inside were records—profiles of little girls, photographs paper-clipped to handwritten notes.
“God…” Jimmy whispered. “They documented everything. Behavioral patterns. Anxiety responses. Nightmares. Dreams. Who they trusted. Who they feared.”
He turned a page and froze.
Sassy’s school photo—age six.
The wind knocked out of her.
“That’s why my mother made me switch schools,” she whispered. “She said it was because I wasn’t fitting in. But it was because they were watching.”
Jimmy reached for her, but she stepped back, eyes flooding.
“I wasn’t special, Jimmy. I was observed. Selected. Groomed.”
Jimmy swallowed hard. “Sassy—this doesn’t define you.”
“It does,” she whispered. “At least part of me. Part of my memories. Part of my childhood.”
Jimmy shook his head fiercely. “No. You define you.”
Sassy looked around the room again, pulse racing.
“How did we meet, Jimmy?”
He blinked. “What?”
“How did we really meet? Not the story we tell—the truth.”
Jimmy frowned. “We met in third grade. You dropped your books in the hallway. I helped you pick them up.”
“And why were you there?” she asked.
Jimmy stared at her, confused. “Because we went to the same school.”
She held the folder to her chest like a shield. “My mother switched me into that school mid-year. Out of nowhere. No warning.”
Jimmy’s face fell.
“You think that means something,” he whispered.
“I think it might,” she said. “I think the Garden watched the girls they marked. And maybe they watched the boys too. The ones from Protector families.”
Jimmy’s pulse hammered visibly at his throat. “Sassy… you’re saying my family wasn’t just involved a hundred years ago—”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I’m saying maybe the Garden never stopped watching.”
Jimmy stepped back as if the air had just gone thin. “No. No, I would’ve known. My dad never—my grandfather never—”
“They wouldn’t have told you,” she whispered. “The Protector lineage only matters to them. To their doctrine. Not to the men born into it.”
Jimmy shook his head hard, panic rising. “So, you think they pushed us together? That this wasn’t real?”
Her eyes shone with tears. “I’m asking if it’s possible. If our whole relationship is… contaminated. If it started because someone wanted us to be near each other.”
Jimmy braced himself against the table, knuckles whitening. “So, what—you think everything between us is fake?”
“No,” she said instantly. “No, Jimmy—not fake. But maybe it was nudged. Maybe it was influenced. Maybe the Garden believed this was our path long before we did.”
Jimmy’s voice cracked. “And what do you believe, Sassy?”
She stepped closer, tears spilling. “I believe I love you. I believe we found each other. But I also believe we have to face the possibility that nothing in our childhood happened by accident.”
Jimmy let out a broken exhale.
“Then tell me this,” he said quietly. “Are you with me because you choose me—or because they want you to?”
Sassy’s chest ached. “I’m with you because I choose you. Every minute. Every day.”
Jimmy nodded, voice trembling. “Then that’s real. More real than anything in this room.”
She took his hand. He held on.
But even as their fingers intertwined, the question hung between them:
Were they bound by love?
Or by a doctrine written long before they were born?
They didn’t have an answer yet.
And the secret room around them—full of journals, symbols, names—felt like it wasn’t done revealing the truth.
Not even close.
22
The secret room smelled of dust and forgotten intentions. Jimmy kept the flashlight steady as Sassy moved from shelf to shelf, scanning the labels on old journals and boxes with trembling hands.
BLOOM READINESS — 1960–1980
MIDWIFE COUNCIL TRANSCRIPTS
PURITY LOGS
OBEDIENCE TRIALS
Jimmy flinched. “They wrote down everything.”
“Of course they did,” Sassy whispered. “When you believe you’re chosen, you document your delusions like scripture.”
Her voice was steady, but her eyes were red.
Jimmy stepped closer. “Sass, we don’t have to read all this. We can leave. Burn it. Destroy it.”
She shook her head. “If I don’t understand where I came from, they’ll always own a part of me.”
Jimmy didn’t argue. Not when he knew how much of her life the Garden had already taken.
Sassy reached a smaller shelf in the far corner, half-hidden behind a toppled chair. Something about it felt different—less organized, more frantic. Journals shoved without care. Papers torn from their bindings. Notes scrawled hastily.
A red string tied several documents together in a bundle.
Sassy pulled it free.
Jimmy stepped beside her, angling the light.
The top page was dated 2005.
Sassy inhaled sharply.
“That’s the year I turned five,” she whispered.
She flipped the page.
And froze.
A familiar handwriting filled the page—tight loops, sharp edges.
Her mother’s handwriting.
Sassy’s knees nearly buckled. “No. No, she wouldn’t have written this.”
Jimmy steadied her. “Let me see it.”
Sassy held it to her chest for a moment—protectively, almost painfully—then slowly handed it to him.
He read aloud:
Midwife Notes — Child 11-B
The girl shows high sensitivity. Compliant. Observant. Dreams vivid. Fear responses stronger than average—positive marker.
Her attachment to the Hartwell boy is promising. Recommend proximity reinforced.
She is nearly ready.
Jimmy’s bearings left him in a rush.
Sassy’s hand flew to her mouth as the world tilted under her feet. “She wrote that,” she whispered. “My mother wrote that about me.”
Jimmy dropped the paper to his side. “Sassy—this doesn’t mean she believed it.”
“But she participated,” Sassy choked. “She observed me. Evaluated me. Rated me like they rated all the other girls.”
Jimmy wrapped his arm around her shoulders, but she didn’t collapse—she stiffened.
“She worked with them,” Sassy said hollowly. “Even before she left. She wasn’t trying to keep me safe. She was trying to make me… ready.”
Jimmy shook his head firmly. “No. We don’t know that.”
Sassy grabbed the page back, flipping it over, her hands shaking violently.
On the back were four words written in darker ink:
I must protect her.
Sassy froze.
Jimmy leaned closer. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “The tone changed. Like she was… doubting. Or breaking.”
Jimmy touched the final line with the edge of the flashlight.
Another phrase was scratched below it—frantic, nearly illegible, as if written moments before fleeing.
They will take her from me.
Sassy let out a sharp gasp and sank onto the small wooden chair at the table’s center.
“So, she tried,” Sassy whispered. “She tried to save me. She waited too long, but she tried.”
Jimmy crouched beside her, hand resting lightly on her knee. “Maybe she was trapped. Maybe she was terrified. Maybe leaving was her way of breaking away from everything she’d been forced to believe.”
Sassy nodded slowly, tears falling silently.
But her jaw tightened.
“She knew,” Sassy whispered. “She knew what they wanted from me. She knew what they planned.”
Jimmy took her hand. “And she saved you.”
“Or delayed them,” Sassy murmured.
Jimmy didn’t argue that one.
Not here.
Not surrounded by the ghosts of doctrine.
Sassy flipped another page from the bundle.
A map. Hand drawn. Detailed.
“What is that?”
“It’s the grove,” Sassy said. “But look.”
She pointed to a faint ‘X’ marked beneath the cellar room they stood in.
Jimmy angled the flashlight lower.
“There’s another level,” he whispered.
“A deeper room,” she said. “Something beneath this one.”
Sassy traced the outline of the map with her fingertip.
“This room… the one we’re in… it’s just the meeting space. The real secret is below it.”
Jimmy’s pulse quickened. “We should find the entrance.”
Sassy nodded.
But before they could move, a sound drifted down the stairs. A very soft, very deliberate sound. Footsteps.
Sassy’s blood ran cold.
Jimmy turned off the flashlight, plunging the room into darkness.
They held their breath.
More footsteps.
Slow.
Measured.
Not searching. Approaching.
Jimmy leaned close, whispering so faintly she felt the words more than heard them.
“They found us.”
Sassy reached for his hand, her grip iron tight.
The footsteps stopped directly outside the door.
A pause.
Then a woman’s voice—soft, calm, familiar in a way that made Sassy’s entire body go rigid.
“Bloom?”
The voice called gently.
“It’s time to come home.”
Jimmy squeezed her hand.
Sassy knew that voice. And she hadn’t heard it since the day her mother ran with her.
23
The voice outside the door froze Sassy’s blood.
“Bloom…? It’s time to come home.”
Jimmy’s hand closed around hers, grip unbreakable, grounding her in the one thing she still knew was real.
Sassy shook her head violently, whispering, “That’s not her. That can’t be her.”
Jimmy leaned close, his voice barely made a noise. “Even if it is—she’s not alone.”
The footsteps shifted outside the room—soft, careful, as if whoever stood there already knew exactly where they were.
Old wood creaked.
Sassy felt panic rising through her chest like something clawing upward. But beneath it, something else stirred—an instinct she didn’t understand.
“Jimmy,” she whispered, fingers trembling as she lifted the map drawn by her mother. “There’s a second room. Beneath this one.”
Jimmy nodded. “We’ll find the entrance. Quietly.”
They moved through the dark by muscle memory and adrenaline, skirting the walls of the secret room. Sassy’s fingers traced the floorboards behind the table, searching for seams. She remembered the map’s mark—near the back corner.
Outside, the voice cooed softly through the door crack:
“Bloom… I know you’re frightened. Let me in. You’ll understand everything.”
Jimmy clenched his jaw, whispering hot against Sassy’s ear, “She’s manipulating you. Don’t listen.”
“I’m not,” Sassy whispered back, though her pulse told another story.
Her hand found a groove in the floorboard. She pressed down. Something clicked.
Jimmy helped her pull up the square of rotted wood. Beneath it lay a metal handle connected to another trapdoor—this one smaller, narrow, almost coffin-like.
Sassy swallowed hard. “This is it.”
Jimmy nodded, lifting it slowly.
A wave of cold, stale air rolled upward, carrying the smell of wet stone and something metallic—like old blood.
“We go together,” Sassy said determined.
Jimmy squeezed her hand. “Always.”
He descended first, dropping silently into darkness. Sassy followed, lowering herself carefully onto a stone platform just as Jimmy steadied her waist, guiding her down.
The trapdoor closed above them with a muted thud.
Instant, suffocating darkness enveloped them.
Jimmy flicked on the flashlight—just briefly. A narrow tunnel stretched ahead, carved roughly into stone. The walls were damp, coated in a thin sheen that reflected the tiny light like veins.
Sassy shuddered. “This doesn’t feel like a meeting space. This feels like—”
“—a ritual space,” Jimmy finished quietly.
But neither said the word they were thinking.
A chamber.
Something sacred to the Garden—
or something forbidden.
Jimmy moved forward, keeping the light low. Sassy stayed close enough that her shoulder brushed his arm with every step. The tunnel sloped downward at a shallow angle, guiding them deeper beneath Ash Grove.
Above them, muffled through layers of earth and timber, the voice called again—still gentle, still impossibly familiar.
“Sassy… sweetheart… don’t run from me.”
Jimmy froze.
Sassy’s entire body went cold.
Her mother’s voice.
But softened. Warped.
Like someone remembering how she used to sound.
Jimmy sighed, “That isn’t real. They know how to imitate people. It’s psychological, not supernatural.”
Sassy nodded, though her throat had closed so tightly she couldn’t force out a word. The air in the tunnel thickened with every step, dense and stale, as if they were walking into a lung that hadn’t breathed in decades.
Their footsteps carried them downward until the tunnel widened abruptly into a small cavern. Jimmy swept the flashlight across the space, and the beam shuddered over details that made Sassy’s stomach twist.
Three stone benches waited in a half-circle formation, smoothed by age or use or both. At the center rose a platform carved from the same cold rock, its edges rounded from countless hands—small ones, frightened ones, faithful ones.
Symbols crawled across the walls, etched deep into the stone like the mountain itself had tried to remember. Some were neat loops and intersecting lines; others were frantic, gouged with desperation or devotion. Candles sat melted into the floor, long dead, their wax hardened into pale, lumpy puddles that clung to the rock like old scars. And the far wall… the far wall was drowned in charcoal markings. Layer after layer of frantic writing overlapped until they became a mass of blackened whispers, the residue of minds that had once believed something with unbearable intensity.
Sassy stepped toward the platform as if pulled by a thread. Her voice emerged in a trembling breath. “This is where they brought girls.”
Jimmy caught her shoulder, fingers tightening in quiet refusal. “Not you, Sass. You never came down here.”
“No,” she said, eyes fixed on the stone beneath her feet. “But I was meant to.”
Her words echoed off the cavern walls, soft and hollow—like a memory trying to surface.
Jimmy’s jaw flexed.
Sassy reached out to the wall, tracing the charcoal writing. Most of it was unreadable, but one phrase repeated like a mantra, growing darker and deeper with every iteration:
THE BLOOM WILL COME HOME
THE BLOOM WILL COME HOME
THE BLOOM WILL COME HOME
“It’s not prophecy. It’s obsession,” Sassy muttered barely able to push the words out.
Jimmy stepped behind her, resting a stabilizing hand on her back. “And we’re breaking it.”
Before she could respond, they heard movement from above.
Not the gentle coaxing voice this time.
Heavy footsteps.
Multiple.
Deliberate.
Descending into the secret room above them.
Jimmy turned off the flashlight instantly.
Darkness swallowed them whole.
Sassy grabbed his shirt, feeling his heartbeat thrumming against her palm.
Voices murmured above—low, indistinct, not meant to soothe. Footsteps creaked across the floorboards. Something metal clinked.
Jimmy’s lips brushed Sassy’s forehead. “We need a way out.”
But there was only the tunnel behind them—the long path back toward the trapdoor now sealed by the people above.
Sassy’s chest tightened. “We’re trapped.”
“No,” Jimmy whispered. “There has to be another way.”
He turned the flashlight back on, shielded under his arm to dim the beam, scanning the chamber. Sassy followed the light until it landed on something she hadn’t noticed.
A second tunnel.
Nearly hidden behind a curtain of roots at the far corner of the chamber.
Jimmy moved toward it, pushing the roots aside. “This leads deeper.”
Sassy’s voice trembled. “Deeper is dangerous.”
“Staying here is worse,” Jimmy said.
He took her hand again—and she squeezed back, hard.
From above, the footsteps grew louder.
Closer.
Purposeful.
Descending the first staircase.
Jimmy met Sassy’s gaze in the thin sliver of light.
“We go now,” he said in a low tone.
She nodded.
Together, they slipped into the second tunnel, roots brushing their clothes, the earth pressing close around them, the sound of their pursuers filtering downward.
Behind them, the chamber echoed with a new voice—calm, chanting, ritualistic.
Not her mother.
Not anyone they recognized.
“The Bloom is near.
The Protector is with her.
Return them to the light.”
Jimmy’s grip tightened.
Sassy felt tears sting her eyes.
Not from fear.
From fury.
And as they ran deeper into the dark, the truth settled cold and heavy in her chest:
The Garden didn’t want to hurt Jimmy.
They wanted to use him.
And that meant their relationship—whatever it truly was—had never been safe from their reach.
Not then.
Not now.
Not ever.
But Sassy wasn’t done fighting for it.
Not by a long shot.
24
The deeper tunnel pressed in around them; its walls slick with moisture and roots that brushed their shoulders like skeletal fingers. Jimmy kept the dimmed flashlight in his left hand, his right gripping Sassy’s tightly. Their breaths echoed in the narrow space—uneven, fast, desperate.
Behind them, voices filtered down from the chamber.
Not running.
Not rushing.
Just… following.
Intentionally.
Patiently.
As if they knew the tunnels better than Sassy and Jimmy ever could.
Sassy stumbled on uneven stone, and Jimmy steadied her. “Careful.”
“I’m fine,” she said, though her voice shook. “We have to keep going.”
The tunnel sloped downward, curving sharply until the floor leveled out and widened into a circular cavern. Jimmy angled the light upward—
And froze.
The walls were carved with hundreds of handprints.
Some small.
Some large.
Some smeared, as if dragged down the stone.
All of them coated in ash.
Sassy’s knees buckled. “I remember this.”
Jimmy turned to her, alarmed. “How?”
She closed her eyes, pressing a hand to her forehead as a memory rushed in, sharp and cold:
She was six.
Her mother carried her into a cold stone room.
The walls were covered in handprints then too.
Women knelt in a circle.
A woman with silver hair lifted Sassy’s hand and pressed it to the wall, smearing ash across her palm.
“She is marked,” the woman said.
Her mother trembled.
Sassy cried.
The sound of her own childhood scream echoed through her skull.
Sassy gasped, stumbling backward into Jimmy’s chest. “I’ve been here. I’ve been here before. They brought me down here.”
Jimmy held her. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t choose any of this.”
But the walls revealed otherwise.
She is marked.
Jimmy swallowed hard. “We should keep moving—”
A sudden noise cut him off: shuffling footsteps coming from another tunnel entrance leading into the handprint chamber.
Jimmy angled the light—and a figure lurched forward from the darkness.
A man.
No—two men.
Dressed in dark coats, hoods pulled low, faces painted with charcoal symbols. Their eyes glinted like they weren’t seeing Sassy and Jimmy as people at all, but as pieces of a story they already believed in.
Jimmy pulled Sassy behind him instinctively.
The first man lunged.
Jimmy swung the flashlight like a weapon, smashing it against the attacker’s face. The man dropped, wailing, but the second convulsed forward, tackling Jimmy to the ground.
“JIMMY!” Sassy screamed.
The flashlight clattered away, plunging the chamber into semi-darkness broken only by the faint glow of Jimmy’s fallen beam.
Jimmy wrestled beneath the man, fists slamming into ribs, elbows finding soft targets. But the attacker was relentless, chanting:
“Protector—Protector—Protector—”
Jimmy’s blood ran cold.
“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” he shouted, shoving the man off.
Sassy grabbed a loose stone from the chamber floor and hurled it at the attacker’s head. It connected with a sickening crack. The man slumped sideways, stunned.
Jimmy scrambled to his feet, chest heaving.
“We need to run,” he gasped.
But Sassy was staring at him—not with fear of the attackers, but fear of the words that had spilled from his mouth.
Jimmy saw her expression and froze. “Sassy… what?”
“You sounded angry,” she said. “But also… like you believed them.”
Jimmy flinched hard. “No. No, Sass—I don’t. I won’t.”
She stepped closer, voice trembling. “What if they’re right? What if something in you… what if something in both of us… was shaped by them? What if you take me back to them without meaning to?”
Jimmy shook his head violently. “I won’t. I swear it.”
But a flash of something crossed his eyes—
a fear deeper than hers.
“Sassy…” he said. “When he said ‘Protector,’ something inside me… reacted. Like a reflex.”
Sassy’s breath caught. “What kind of reflex?”
“A pull,” he admitted hoarsely. “Like a… direction. A path. Instinctive.”
Her stomach twisted.
“Jimmy—”
“I won’t follow it,” he said immediately, stepping closer, cupping her face with shaking hands. “I don’t care what they wrote. I don’t care about lineage. The only thing that matters is you.”
The flashlight dimmed, the battery fading fast.
Sassy turned toward the far side of the chamber, where another tunnel sloped downward—this one narrower, carved cleaner, lined with what looked like slate tiles instead of raw stone.
The deeper passage.
Jimmy followed her gaze. “That must be the confession chamber Elara mentioned.”
Sassy nodded, wiping tears from her cheeks. “If this is where they brought girls… then the truth—real truth—might be there.”
Jimmy hesitated. “Sassy, deeper means more dangerous.”
“I know,” she said. “But they’re coming from behind us. We can’t go back.”
Jimmy grabbed the dying flashlight. “Then deeper it is.”
They hurried into the third tunnel, the light flickering over the smooth tile. The air changed—cooler, cleaner, less earthy. Almost sterile.
Sassy felt her pulse hammer in her throat. “This wasn’t carved in the 1800s. This was built later—recently.”
Jimmy nodded grimly. “Modern cults update their architecture, I guess.”
At the end of the tunnel, they reached a metal door.
Not old.
Not rusted.
Industrial.
Reinforced.
Like something in a laboratory.
Sassy’s whole body went still.
Jimmy whispered, “This is it.”
Sassy pushed the door—it creaked open, revealing a chamber carved from smooth stone with a single chair bolted to the floor. A spotlight hung from the ceiling. The walls were covered with writing—questions, statements, accusations.
WHO DO YOU TRUST?
WHAT DO YOU FEAR?
WHAT WILL YOU SACRIFICE?
WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE?
Sassy stepped inside, shaking.
Her childhood voice echoed through her head:
“Mommy, don’t make me sit in the chair…”
Jimmy grabbed her hand. “No. No, Sassy—you don’t have to remember this.”
But it was too late.
The memory flooded in:
Her mother holding her hand too tightly.
The women circling.
The spotlight burning hot.
Relentless chanting.
And a question she didn’t understand then—
“Who will protect the Bloom?”
Sassy gasped and stumbled.
Jimmy caught her—but she reeled away from him, panic in her eyes.
“Jimmy, don’t touch me,” she said sharply. “Not right now.”
He froze, shattered. “Sassy…”
She pressed her palms to her eyes, tears leaking through her fingers. “I don’t want to be afraid of you. I don’t want to question you.”
Jimmy’s voice cracked. “Then don’t. Please don’t.”
But she shook her head helplessly. “Jimmy… what if the Garden made us feel meant for each other? What if this—us—is part of their plan?”
Jimmy staggered back like she’d struck him. “No. Sass, no—what we have is real.”
“How do you know?” she yelled as she fought for her bearings. “How do we know anything was ever ours?”
Footsteps thundered from the corridor behind them.
Jimmy snapped around. “No more time.”
He grabbed her hand, gripping it with fierce determination.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Even if they shaped us—even if they nudged our lives together—they don’t own what we built. They don’t own what I feel for you. They don’t own me.”
Her voice trembled. “Promise me, Jimmy. Promise me they can’t turn you into whatever they believe you are.”
He swallowed hard—fear visible in every line of his face.
“I promise. I’m fighting it every second.”
The door slammed open behind them.
More Garden followers poured into the chamber, faces obscured, hands reaching.
Jimmy pulled Sassy toward a narrow ventilation shaft in the corner—barely large enough for one person.
“Sassy, go!”
She shook her head. “Not without you!”
“SASSY, GO!”
She climbed in—just as the flashlight died fully—and Jimmy slammed the grate behind her.
His last words before darkness swallowed him:
“Find the truth.
Then come back for me.”
25
The moment the grate clanged shut behind her, the world narrowed to tight metal walls, stale air, and the muffled sounds of chaos echoing from the confession chamber.
Jimmy’s voice—
shouting her name—
cut off by the sound of bodies colliding.
Sassy crawled forward on her elbows, chest scraping the cold metal. Her hands shook with every movement, but she forced herself deeper into the shaft, deeper into darkness.
Behind her, Jimmy roared:
“GET AWAY FROM ME—DON’T TOUCH HER—”
A sharp crack.
A thud.
Voices chanting.
Sassy stopped crawling, hands trembling violently.
She pressed her forehead to the metal floor, squeezing her eyes shut as tears slid down her cheeks.
I left him.
I left him.
I left him with them.
She clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob.
But Jimmy’s last words echoed in her head:
Find the truth.
Then come back for me.
She inhaled shakily and forced herself onward.
The shaft bent sharply downward, forcing Sassy to slide on her stomach. Rust flaked under her palms. The air grew colder, thinner. Her shoulders scraped the sides. Several times she had to exhale fully just to squeeze through.
Her heartbeat thundered so loudly she feared they’d hear it through the metal.
Her mind spiraled:
Why did they want Jimmy?
Why didn’t he fight harder?
What if they turn him?
What if the prophecy isn’t just doctrine?
“No,” She shook her head, crawling faster. “Jimmy is Jimmy. He won’t bend to them.”
But she wasn’t entirely sure anymore.
The Garden had been shaping her since birth—
but what if they’d been shaping Jimmy too?
The shaft split into two directions. The left was narrower, steep, coated in dust.
The right held faint light.
Barely visible.
A glow that pulsed irregularly.
Sassy moved toward it.
After ten feet, the metal gave way to stone. The vent opened into a small recess in the wall of another underground room. She pressed her face to the opening and peered out.
Her breath seized.
It was another chamber—
smaller, more intimate, candlelit—
a room for writing, planning, conspiring.
A desk sat against one wall, layered in yellowed papers. A lantern glowed weakly overhead, revealing a female silhouette painted onto the rock wall—stylized, symbolic.
The Bloom.
But beside it was another figure—
taller, broader—
standing at the Bloom’s side.
The Protector.
Their hands were touching.
Sassy felt her stomach twist painfully. “No… no, no.”
She pushed the grate silently and it loosened. She slipped out of the vent and landed lightly on the stone floor.
Her legs were shaky, but she stood.
And she walked to the desk.
On the desk was a leather-bound journal. Old but not ancient. Her fingers hovered above it in dread and curiosity. She flipped it open. The handwriting was unmistakable. Her mother’s. Sassy staggered back, gripping the edge of the desk.
The entry was dated the year Sassy turned six:
They asked me to bring her to the Confession Chamber today. I hesitated. For the first time, I hesitated. The doctrine says the Bloom must be cleansed of fear, but she cried when they touched her. They say attachment is weakness. They say I must sever it.
But she is my child.
Not theirs.
They say the Protector must be prepared too. That he is growing, that he watches her. They say together they will fulfill the final circle when the time comes.
I do not believe this. I will not believe it.
Sassy’s body shook violently.
Another entry—written days later:
The boy is kind. That terrifies me more than anything. They see meaning in it. They twist warmth into prophecy.
If I stay, they will twist me too.
I must leave. I must save her.
But they will come for her. And for him.
Sassy dropped the journal, pressing her fists to her mouth to suppress a cry.
Her mother didn’t just run.
She rebelled.
She fought.
She saw what Jimmy meant to the Garden and she fled before they could complete whatever sick design they’d imagined.
And Jimmy—
He’d been a part of the Garden’s story since childhood
without ever knowing it.
Sassy lifted the journal again, flipping to the last page.
A warning was scribbled in frantic handwriting:
If you are reading this, then they have found you.
Do not trust anyone who claims they know the Protector.
They will try to use him against you.
They will twist love into purpose.
Run.
Run before they turn him into something he never chose to be.
Sassy’s vision blurred.
“Jimmy…” she said, sinking to her knees. “They’re going to break him.”
Another voice echoed from somewhere deeper in the tunnels— a groan, pained and familiar.
Jimmy.
Alive.
Hurt.
Her heart surged painfully.
“No.” She wiped her face with her sleeve. “No. I’m not leaving you down here.”
She shoved the journal into her backpack, forcing herself to her feet. She scanned the chamber and spotted another exit—a narrow corridor leading downward.
Toward the sound.
Toward Jimmy.
Toward whatever the Garden had planned.
Her hands trembled—but her voice did not.
“Hold on, Jimmy,” she said. “I’m coming for you.”
And she stepped deeper into the tunnels—
toward the danger,
toward the truth,
and toward the boy the Garden wanted to rewrite.