The fog came with the nightfall.
It rolled over Stillfall like a slow, heavy tide, drowning the world in a cold, suffocating gray. Elliot stood by the porch, lantern in hand, watching as the familiar shapes of trees and stones dissolved into mist. Even the glowshrooms lining the garden path seemed to hesitate, their light flickering uncertainly.
Something was wrong.
He could feel it in the way the vines stiffened. In the sharp, sour smell rising from the mossberries. In the way the soil trembled—not from rain, but from footsteps too light for humans.
Lyra stood beside him, clutching the old gardening spear they had reforged together. She didn't speak. She didn't need to. Her golden eyes were wide and alert, scanning the mist for shapes.
They both heard it at the same time.
A scraping sound. Wet and uneven, like claws dragging across stone.
Then another. Closer.
The Ashlurkers had come.
Elliot's grip tightened on the lantern.
He had heard rumors about them in the old days—creatures born from the rot and ash of the world's ending. Twisted things that once might have been wolves or men or worse, now little more than instincts wrapped in broken bodies. They hunted in silence, feeding on anything warm, anything breathing.
And now they had found his garden.
He set the lantern down carefully and motioned for Lyra to stay close. Together, they moved toward the outer rows where the tallstalks grew tallest.
Shapes flickered in the mist.
Low. Crawling. Wrong.
A ripple passed through the garden.
The vines began to move.
Not wildly—not with fear—but with purpose. Thornlash vines uncoiled from the soil like serpents, their barbed tips twitching toward the intruders. The glowshrooms pulsed brighter, casting eerie pools of light across the ground.
Elliot heard a wet snarl—and then a shriek as one of the Ashlurkers lunged forward.
The Thornlash struck first.
With a whip-like crack, it lashed out, catching the creature across its withered torso. The thing let out a screech, stumbling backward into the fog, only for another vine to snap forward and pin it to the ground.
Elliot didn't waste the chance. He surged forward, driving his spear into the Ashlurker's core. The body spasmed once, then went still, dissolving into black ash.
One down.
Too many more to go.
From the mist, a chorus of snarls rose.
They were being surrounded.
"Stay with me," Elliot said, planting his back against Lyra's. "Don't let them separate us."
She nodded, face pale but determined.
More Ashlurkers came, darting through the mist in broken, unnatural motions. But the garden fought with them.
Vines lashed and twisted. Roots surged from the earth, tripping and binding. Even the Heartroot—still small, still young—throbbed at the center of the garden, sending waves of strength into the plants around it.
Elliot fought like he farmed: steadily, methodically, refusing to yield an inch of ground. Lyra moved with surprising grace, her light steps almost like a dance as she struck and parried and weaved among the vines.
It wasn't perfect.
Some Thornlashes were torn apart. Some crops were trampled.
But the line held.
For now.
Hours later, the last of the Ashlurkers fled into the thinning fog, their numbers broken.
The garden was a mess of torn vines, crushed soil, and blackened ash. The air stank of burnt meat and old blood.
But it had survived.
Elliot dropped to one knee, exhausted, planting the broken end of his spear into the ground.
Lyra knelt beside him, her hands shaking as she pressed a cloth to a shallow cut on his arm.
"We did it," she whispered, her voice hoarse.
"Yeah," he said, breathing heavily. "We did."
Around them, the surviving plants began to glow softly—comforting, grateful.
The garden was more than just crops now.
It was alive.
It was home.
And together, they would defend it.
No matter what came next.