In the Archive of Quiet Echoes—a library that only contained pages never finished—Yemra read aloud the last line of a half-tale:
"And then she stepped into the light, not knowing if—"
She stopped.
The whole room exhaled.
Not in tension.
In recognition.
Because the power of that story wasn't in what happened.
It was in what was left for you to hold.
Not to complete.
To companion.
To live beside.
Jevan walked alone in the dusk of a Garden now too vast to ever fully walk.
He passed through pockets of near-myth, where strangers practiced naming and un-naming.
He passed a group painting stories on the backs of leaves, letting the wind decide where they'd land.
He passed children burying questions in the soil like seeds.
And he smiled.
Because what he had once built in resistance—
What he had held in grief—
What he had carried across endings—
Was now being re-shaped by a truth he had only begun to grasp:
The Garden did not grow because of what was planted.
