The moment Sam stepped through the rusted archway, the world seemed... heavier.
It wasn't just the humidity thickening the air or the stagnant scent of old leaves fermenting in the soil. It was something deeper, something pressing against her skin from the inside.Her classmates didn't seem to notice.
They moved like children let loose in a candy store, running ahead, taking photos with bright smiles that clashed painfully with the oppressive atmosphere.Even Wang, usually the first to sense when something was off, brushed it off.
But Sam felt it.
Like the air itself was watching.
The nursery was nothing like she had imagined. There were no neatly labeled flower beds, no tour guides with rehearsed speeches.Instead, the place sprawled like an abandoned labyrinth, overgrown and wild. The plants here weren't arranged—they fought for space, tangled together in a suffocating, living web.
The colors were wrong.
Flowers she couldn't name bloomed in colors she didn't recognize—shades that hurt her eyes if she stared too long. Reds that looked... wet. Yellows that flickered like dying neon lights.
Sam kept her hands to herself, resisting the urge to touch them.
Do not touch them.The voice echoed again in her head, softer this time, like a memory leaking through a crack.
"Sam, you good?" Wang asked, nudging her arm.
She realized she had stopped walking.
"Yeah... just... feels weird, doesn't it?" she whispered.
Wang looked around, frowning.
"Yeah. But maybe that's the charm. This place is supposed to be rare, right? I mean... endangered species and stuff?"
"Doesn't mean it has to feel... alive," she muttered.
Wang grinned. "You mean evil alive? Like those horror games you play?"
She didn't laugh.
Because something was moving in the bushes.
No, not something. Dozens of somethings.
Shadows. Wriggling. Sliding.
Sam blinked. They were gone.
Was her mind playing tricks?
The deeper they ventured, the more the world twisted.
The sky above was still visible through gaps in the greenhouse ceiling, but it looked wrong—purple-tinted, with clouds shaped like melting faces.
"Wang... tell me you see that," Sam whispered, pointing at the sky.
He looked up and shrugged.
"Clouds, Sam. Kinda pretty actually."
Sam's breath caught.
It wasn't just the sky.
The plants were shifting when she wasn't looking. She would glance at a red, spiral-shaped flower, look away, and when she looked back, it had too many petals... and they were opening like jaws.
She rubbed her eyes.
Hallucinations.They had to be.
Maybe the place sprayed some weird mist? Maybe they were all breathing something they shouldn't?
Her mind raced, recalling that old book in her bag—Forbidden Flora. She remembered a chapter on rare flowers that released psychoactive spores.
But... this didn't feel like simple hallucinations.
It felt sentient.
Then came the scream.
It shattered the sticky silence, bouncing off the glass walls like a gunshot.
Sam and Wang ran toward the sound, pushing past tangled vines that seemed to clutch at their legs.
They found a group of students huddled around a boy—his face pale, his body rigid.
"He... he touched it!" one of the girls sobbed."It bit him or something—he just... collapsed!"
Sam's eyes darted to the plant nearby.
A vine covered in pulsing blue bulbs.
They swore they saw a small, rainbow-colored worm writhing on its surface.
"Do not touch them."
The words pulsed in Sam's skull now, louder, more urgent.
Sakda.Where was he?Why wasn't he warning them now?
Sam looked at the boy again.His eyes were wide open—but glassy, as if he wasn't there anymore.
"He's not breathing," Wang whispered.
"No... no, no, no," Sam muttered, panic rising in her chest.
The teacher tried calling the hospital.No signal.
"We have to get out of here!" someone yelled.
But when they turned toward the path they came from... it wasn't there.
The entrance was gone.
Only more vines, more impossible colors.
The path twisted into something unfamiliar, alien.
Sam clutched Wang's arm tightly.
"This place... it's alive," she whispered, tears stinging her eyes.
"I... I think you're right," Wang replied, his voice small.
And then, like a ghost in the fog, Sakda appeared again.
But this time... he wasn't shouting.
He was standing still, staring at them with hollow eyes.
His mouth moved, but no sound came.
Sam tried to read his lips.
You shouldn't have come here.
The world darkened.The students around them fell like puppets with their strings cut.
Sam grabbed Wang's hand, running blindly into the maze of plants.
"Run, Wang! Run!"
But no matter how far they ran, the nursery stretched on... endless.
And above them, the sky flickered like a dying screen.