PROLOGUE
“Where the Roses Don’t Wilt”
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Before the story begins, a garden burns.
No screams.
No ashes.
Just glass breaking in silence —
and a single red rose that does not wilt.
Not even under fire.
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They say roses are fragile.
That they bleed when touched too roughly.
But not this one.
This one was made in a lab.
Preserved in chemical grace.
Stained red with something that was once called love.
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In the west wing of the estate, behind a locked greenhouse door,
roses bloom where no soil exists.
Their petals are thick with frost.
Unmoving.
Unfading.
Each one is numbered.
Each one is hers.
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There’s a corridor not marked on any map.
At the end of it:
a room filled with light too white to feel warm.
And in it, a bed.
A girl with a blank face,
a pulse like a whisper,
and a vase of roses by her side.
> “Sleep, sweetheart,”
says the woman who tucks the blankets around her like a ceremony.
“You’re safe now.
There’s no thorns here.
Only me.”
The petals never fall.
She makes sure of that.
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Somewhere in the darkened halls, a name is being erased.
Line by line.
Photo by photo.
Until all that’s left is a label on a file drawer:
> RZ-RED: Specimen intact. Awaiting bloom.
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And still —
in the forgotten soil of a dream,
the girl stirs.
She does not know her name.
She does not know the winter garden.
But deep beneath her ribs,
where warmth once lived,
something reaches.
It isn’t memory.
It’s something older than that.
Something more dangerous.
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> A rose does not choose to bloom.
It is opened —
carefully, deliberately —
by the hands that will one day cut it down.
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And so she wakes.
No mirror.
No clock.
No name.
Just white sheets, a red rose,
and a voice too kind to fear —
yet too familiar to trust.
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