Dr. Elise Navarro knew silence. Real silence. The kind found only in the deep Arctic woods, a soundscape so barren that even her heartbeat seemed intrusive. She’d been stationed at a decommissioned research post in northern Canada, an isolated prefab shelter repurposed for climate studies, far from any signal, civilization, or screaming.

She preferred it that way.

The first sign was a dream—not her own, she was certain. It started on her third week: a whisper behind her eyes, not in her ears. Not language, not exactly, but something close. A rhythmic throb of thought that pulsed beneath sleep, like vines creeping over a forgotten monument.

She awoke with her nails bloodied and the bedsheets torn. A word—Kirratal—scratched into the condensation of the windowglass, even though she hadn’t spoken it. Even though she didn’t know how to spell it.

She started hearing the voice during waking hours on day 27. It echoed through her equipment, distorted like wind through broken reeds. Static-laced syllables in her satellite radio, warped harmonics in her climate sensors. Always the same cadence. Always Kirratal.

When the power failed, she wasn’t surprised.

She switched to notebooks. Writing made it feel normal again, until the handwriting changed. Her neat script morphed into curling loops and rootlike twists she couldn’t reproduce while awake. Whole paragraphs she didn’t remember writing appeared in her field journal—warnings, prayers, or invitations, she couldn’t tell. The words glowed faintly at night, and stank of decayed chlorophyll.

Outside, the trees had changed. They were moving—not swaying in the wind, but shifting, like growth was accelerating on an impossible timeline. Roots surfaced and coiled, branches grew with the sound of creaking bone. And at the center of the woods, just beyond where her floodlights reached, there was a pulse. Like a heartbeat, underground.

She saw it. Finally.

A plant, if it could be called that, wide as a satellite dish and wet as fresh flesh. Its surface shimmered with a waxy sheen. From its center rose antennae—dozens of them, trembling, leaning, listening. They looked like eyeless leeches.

It dreamed into her.

There were no spores, no chemicals. It didn’t need biology. It grew directly into the brain, riding the frequencies of consciousness, implanting thoughts the way a vine creeps into brick. She saw visions of its roots tangled across miles of tundra, reaching toward cities. It didn’t want her body. It wanted her signal.

She tried to burn it. Fire failed. It rained ash and left the whispers louder.

Elise’s final note was carved into the wall with a broken antenna shaft:

“If you dream of vines, do not sleep again.”

No one found her. But the satellite uplink reconnected on January 8, transmitting a single data burst before going offline for good.

It contained only one word:
Kirratal.