The world did not crack.
It did not roar into change.
It flowed.
A shift so gentle, many missed it.
A page turned not by hand—
—but by breath.
For when enough silence gathers…
…a voice need not arrive.
A world does.
The Garden no longer needed caretakers.
It had caretakers still—Elowen, Jevan, Yemra, the child born from the Second Seed—but they had ceased guiding it.
They were no longer authors.
They were readers now.
And the Garden? It had begun to write itself.
Not randomly. Not lawlessly.
But with a kind of living grammar—shaped by feeling, rhythm, resonance.
You could walk one path three times and it would read three different ways.
Not because the path changed.
But because you did.
In the northwest groves, a city formed.
It was not built.
It grew.
Constructs of reclaimed memory and formless stone arranged themselves into shapes that suited not one mind—but collective intention.
