The Devouring Green

When Hector Vasquez-Marin receives a preserved human heart threaded with an impossible black root, he recognizes it immediately: the specimen he's pursued for twenty years has finally arrived. The coordinates match. The preservation technique is ancient.

And the root, pulsing, responsive, alive,
is growing through the heart like a verdant parasite.

This is no ordinary botanical anomaly.

This is a doorway.