Black Thorn

In the shadow of his late wife's memory, Victor Harrow lives alone in a sprawling Connecticut estate, finding solace only in his vast greenhouse collection. When a mysterious package arrives containing his wife Isabel's final gift, a rare black-tipped rose from her last expedition, a single thorn prick changes everything. The infection starts small: dark veins spreading beneath his skin, leaves sprouting where they shouldn't exist. But when anger takes hold, something monstrous awakens. Those who cross Victor's path suffer an impossible fate as tiny tendrils burrow into their flesh, transforming them into grotesque gardens of bone and bloom. As the plant's influence grows stronger, Victor discovers his wife's terrifying secret: the rose is no ordinary specimen, but an ancient parasite that dissolves the boundary between human and plant. Desperate to contain the spreading horror, he seals himself away. But isolation only accelerates his transformation. Now something more than human and less than plant, Victor faces an impossible choice. Fight the infection and die, or surrender to it and become the seed of humanity's destruction. Because the rose has woken something that should have stayed buried—and what blooms from Victor Harrow's flesh will change the world forever. The garden is patient. The garden is hungry.