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Zaelia shivered, wrapping her arms around herself as she glanced around the Cemetary, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. A breeze slithered around the tired looking headstones, stirring dead leaves into a whispering chorus. Her eyes betrayed a flicker of unease, as she asked her friend... "Wasn’t there another way we could pass instead of here?"

Casey didn’t slow down. "Girl no. What are you afraid of? This is the safest place you could be. The dead tell no tales."

Zaelia stumbles running to catch up with Casey, not wanting to be left alone among cracked angels and moss-covered headstones. She might lose her marbles, her mind was already replaying every horror story she’d ever heard about cemeteries. "But what is it you want me to see?"

"It's a surprise."

Zeala groaned softly. Casey’s “surprises” usually didn't involve anything good.

They weaved between headstones until Casey finally slowed near the far end of the cemetery, where the graves grew older and the air felt heavier. "Ta-da, here it is!" She said dramatically, flinging her arms out.

Zeala blinked, and blinked again. Moonlight pooled across a small clearing. What was she suppose to be seeing? There was nothing but an ancient marble cross.

"Uh. I don't see anything."

"It's there, the flower!" Casey jabs her finger at A pale, almost silvery blossom with long, delicate petals curled inward like it was shy about existing, a little before the base of the cross.

"You dragged me out. Ten o'clock, at night, to see a flower in a Cemetary. Girl, you've got to be kidding." She said flatly. “I thought you were about to show me your great, great, great, great, great granny's grave, or Dracula's tomb. Not a plant, Casey!”

"But it's blooming."

"Wow, that's groundbreaking. Casey, flowers freaking bloom. What's the big deal? Next you’ll tell me the grass is growing. Did you like, smoke something? Look, let's go."

"No wait, Zaelia." She grabbed her arm. "You need to see this, look at the flower."

She turned slowly, just as the petals began to unfurl further, stretching toward the moonlight. "What's going on? Why is it doing that?"

“Every four years. For exactly one hour, it blooms.” Casey’s voice dropped to a near whisper. “And when it does… a portal opens.”

The ground beneath the flower shimmered faintly, like heat was rising from the ground. The moonlight seemed to bend around it, pooling too brightly in one small circle.

Zaelia held onto Casey's arm, eyes wide in disbelief. "Casey I don't like this. You mustn't believe everything you hear." The night had gone unnaturally cold their flash lights flickered a bit.

Casey’s eyes gleamed. "It's true. You see what's happening. A portal to another realm is opening."

The flower started trembling, and a low hum vibrated through the ground beneath their feet, causing Zaelia, to whimper and back away, trying to drag Casey with her. A thin, glowing circle carved itself into the ground around the flower—precise, deliberate, like something had drawn it there. And then a tear opened in the space just above the flower. Not in the ground.

In the air. It began as a glowing white slit suspended a few inches above the bloom, widening slowly, peeling apart like invisible hands were pulling reality open from both sides. Threads of light stretched between the two halves before snapping one by one.

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