Arduino IDE and esp8266 arduino-crypto library - c++

Question

I am using arduino-crypto for my ESP8266. I'm not running into any errors but I do have an issue that I hope you can solve for me.
This code:
#define BLOCK_SIZE 16
uint8_t key[BLOCK_SIZE] = { 0x1C,0x3E,0x4B,0xAF,0x13,0x4A,0x89,0xC3,0xF3,0x87,0x4F,0xBC,0xD7,0xF3, 0x31, 0x31 };
uint8_t iv[BLOCK_SIZE] = { 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 };
char plain_text[] = "1234567890ABCDEF1234567890ABCDEF";
// encrypt
int length = 0;
bufferSize(plain_text, length);
char encrypted[length];
encrypt(plain_text, encrypted, length);
Serial.println("");
Serial.print("Encrypted: ");
Serial.println(encrypted);
Serial.println(length);
Serial.println(strlen(encrypted));
Works just fine and gives me an encryption value of:
Encrypted: y3QzsGi6cYiy3GGs31jXvTY8VI2OrlxsohOasiw4pgP+54gWXtUZPrjuRvOfyRTz
Now if i do both encrypt and decrypt then it decodes it just fine.
However, when i just run the decryption and copy the encrypted value and then run this:
// decrypt
char* encrypted = "y3QzsGi6cYiy3GGs31jXvTY8VI2OrlxsohOasiw4pgP+54gWXtUZPrjuRvOfyRTz";
int length = strlen(encrypted);
char decrypted[length];
decrypt(encrypted, decrypted, length);
Serial.print("Decrypted: ");
Serial.println(decrypted);
It outputs this in the console:
Decrypted: ⸮⸮⸮⸮⸮j⸮Ҏ⸮R|;⸮⸮1234567890ABCDEF
It has a few original message letters/numbers in there but not sure why its not decrpting it like it does when you run both back-to-back.
What can be done in order to fix this?