The directions were barely legible.
Scribbled in the corner of Galen's oldest field notes, between a glyph sketch and a torn sentence:
"—trees that bear no name. Entry requires forgetting the path."
Kael had stared at that line for hours.
Now, two weeks after leaving Sprout Tower, he stood at the edge of a meadow where the trees bent sideways, growing in spirals, their roots above the soil like reaching fingers. The wind was soft here, but the air felt heavy, like it was holding its breath.
Echo paced the grass ahead, nose twitching. "This is it."
"How can you tell?" Kael asked.
"I don't know," she said. "I just… feel less remembered."
Kael blinked. "Is that bad?"
She tilted her head. "Not if you're willing to leave something behind."
They stepped off the trail.
Immediately, the sounds changed.
Birds stopped calling. Grass no longer rustled beneath their feet. Kael glanced back — the entrance was gone. No path. No markers. Just more trees. Each twisted gently, as if in thought.
He pulled out his map. The ink had vanished from it.
Echo watched him.
"This place only grows what the world refused to tell."
The first fruit they saw wasn't on a branch.
It was floating.
A single orb — round and pale gold — hovered beside a tree whose bark shimmered like old memory. Kael stepped toward it, but the fruit moved away, drifting lazily deeper into the orchard.
Echo followed.
"Be careful," she said. "These aren't symbols. They're unspoken endings."
Kael frowned. "You're saying the trees grow… stories that never happened?"
She nodded. "But they still want to be known."
As they wandered, more fruit appeared.
Some glowed faintly.
Some whispered in forgotten dialects.
Some turned away when Kael reached out, like they were shy of being touched.
One tree bore hundreds of tiny pods that pulsed like heartbeats. Another had a single obsidian apple hanging from a split branch, humming with a voice that said:
"I never got to leave the tower…"
Kael stepped back.
"I think that one was me," he whispered.
They reached a clearing near the center by dusk.
A low stone bench sat beneath a tree that didn't spiral — it reached straight up, every branch thin and patient. Hanging from the branches were silken leaves, each shaped like a page torn from an unwritten book.
Kael sat.
Echo sat beside him.
And then she said:
"I think I'm changing again."
He looked over quickly.
"What do you mean?"
She pawed at the earth once, uncertain.
"I've been… gathering," she said. "Not just memories. Maybes. Stories that people never chose. Paths that were left behind."
Kael blinked.
"You're evolving?"
"Not in the way Pokémon do," she said. "In the way stories do."
Light gathered around her paws.
Soft. Like mist curling in moonlight.
Glyphs formed along her fur — not just Unown, but new ones Kael had never seen. Shapes that almost meant something, but shifted each time he blinked.
Then Echo looked up.
"I'm not just an echo anymore," she said.
Kael nodded.
"I think you're the orchard's first fruit."
She laughed — a warm, startled sound.
Then she leaned against his leg.
And they sat together in the orchard that never was.
Neither speaking.
Both becoming.
In the morning, the trees had changed.
Several had grown fruit shaped like Echo.
Not exact — but close.
One pulsed softly with a light like hers.
Kael didn't pick it.
He just bowed his head.
And said: "Thank you."
They left the orchard the way they came — without knowing how.
But something followed them out.
A single leaf from the central tree, shaped like a question mark, curled into Kael's pack.
He didn't touch it.
Didn't study it.
He just carried it forward.
Not as a burden.
But as a possibility.