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A LitRPG tale of Mira Havel, a greenhouse engineer who enters a mixed-reality game to recover a living Heartseed. She faces corrupted systems, wins allies, and chooses to graft life into code rather than erase it. The story blends plant science, game mechanics, and quiet human repair.
Mira woke to the smell of wet earth. The city outside her window was a hard band of glass and light. Inside the fifth-floor greenhouse, heat and moisture wrapped around her like a blanket. Fog hissed from a copper line. Tiny droplets gathered on broad leaves. Roots threaded dark soil like fine rope. She touched a seedling. It trembled under her palm. Her thumb found the split in the cotyledon. She smiled without thinking. This small thing was proof.
Her hair was damp from the night. She tied it back with a strip of cloth. A soft blue strip of light slid across the glass. SylvaLink was awake. Her tablet hummed on a stack of clay pots. Icons fluttered. Stats pulsed. She glanced. Her profile sat at the top.
[PROFILE] Mira Havel. Age 28. Occupation: Horticultural Engineer. Base Stats: Health 98. Focus 77. Cultivation 14. Inventory: Soil Knife, Mist Collar, 7 Seed Vials.
The HUD was dry. It was also comfort. It mapped the greenhouse like a game zone. Tiny glyphs marked plants. Numbers popped when she touched a leaf. 3 XP. 1 XP. A line marked a new entry. She had been working on the Heartseed for months. The Heartseed was not a myth. It was a lab strain, slow and stubborn. It responded to light shifts. It mapped bacterial patterns like a tiny brain. She had given it a room of its own.
A bell from the corridor. Her neighbor, Jonah, knocked. He was an urban beekeeper and a talker. He used too much cologne. He kept his bees in a flight box on the balcony two floors down. Mira opened the door a crack.
'Morning,' Jonah said. He held up a chipped mug. 'Coffee?'
'Later,' she said. 'Not a lot of time.'
He eyed the racks. 'Still with the Heartseed?'
'Still.' She felt a small surge of pride. She had slept under grow lights. She had logged notes at two in the morning. The HUD recorded everything. Her work was a rhythm of checks and tiny fixes. She liked the quiet.
She tapped the tablet. The screen swam. A small patch note rolled in. Green letters: SYLVA NET - PATCH 11. New Biome: Axiom Greenbelt. Experimental sync protocol enabled. Beta volunteers required. She scrolled. A line blinked: EVENT: ROOTING - VOLUNTEER SEED DEPLOYMENT.
Mira frowned. She did not volunteer for events. She liked control. She also liked growth. Her thumb hovered over 'Enroll'. The greenhouse hummed. Outside, the city blinked awake.