In the damp understory of a forgotten forest, a biophage spore drifts onto the armored hide of a wandering trilobite. Within hours, the spore germinates, sending fine tendrils into the creature's joints, not to kill but to repurpose. The trilobite, now a mobile garden, carries the biophage's fruiting bodies to new sunlit clearings, a slow, symbiotic drift that blurs the lines between predator and host. biophage encounters