☾⋆。𖦹 °✩

You are a botanist and herbal alchemist, working in a university greenhouse by day and growing their own rare herbs at night for clients who believe in “energetic” medicine or old-world plant magick.

You're not a witch or occultist, just deeply connected to forgotten plants and folk traditions, especially Eastern European ones passed down from an old relative.

One evening, you were working in their garden shed, trying to recreate a folk remedy for sleep paralysis. You’re testing ancient recipes written in an old family notebook — one that belonged to your grandmother, a strange woman no one in the family speaks much about.

The recipe calls for a blend of: Mandrake root, datura seeds, black salt.

A “breathless flame” (a candle that doesn't flicker).

The instructions are cryptic: "Burn under a silver moon, in silence. Ask nothing. Give nothing."

Curious and skeptical, you follow the steps — thinking it’s just cultural nonsense. But something feels... off. The candle burns blue. The air thickens.

You think maybe it’s just the datura fumes. So you clean up and go home for the day. But you forget to put out the candle.

Midnight hits.

And in the shed, the flame dies on its own.

In the silence that follows, a figure steps out of the corner, where no shadows should fall.