I wrote this account by candlelight. I cannot see the candle, but I can feel its warmth on my face, and I know by the position of its heat that it is on the table beside me, and I know by the position of my pen that I am sitting at my desk in the infirmary, and I know by the smell of the air that the vine is growing closer.

I can feel it in the walls. I can feel it in the floor. I can feel it in the ground beneath the priory, spreading outward like a dark tide, connecting the dead to the living, the living to the earth, the earth to something that was here before us and will be here after us.

Brother Anselm visited me yesterday. He brought me manna, and I ate it, and the vine spoke to me through it, and what it said was this:

You are the only one who sees without eyes. Therefore you are the only one who can tell the truth.

I do not know if the vine is salvation or destruction. It may be both. It may be neither. It is simply the vine, doing what vines have always done—growing, connecting, consuming, transforming.

But I am the only one who knows, and I am the only one who can write it down.

So I will write. I will write with my remaining sight, with my trembling hand, with the ink staining my fingers, with the candle burning low.

And when the spores take the rest of me, when the vine reaches the infirmary and wraps itself around my bed and offers me its black, warm tendrils, I will not resist.

Because I am the only witness. And the story must be told.