Night fell, though no sun had set.
The Garden, now half-sanctuary, half-scar, sighed under the weight of the story being rewritten. Its vines no longer just clung to memory; they curled toward intention. The stars above blinked in hesitant patterns—as if even the constellations were unsure of their roles in this emerging chapter.
The girl—still unnamed—sat beneath the oldest tree, the one grown from Aiden's final act of narrative defiance. In her hand, the page she'd chosen no longer floated. It rested. Heavy with potential. As though it now knew it had been selected.
She hadn't written a word on it.
Not yet.
But the page pulsed. It was no longer blank. It had begun to dream.
Jevan approached quietly, not wishing to break whatever fragile thread bound her to that silence.
"Do you know what it says?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"It hasn't decided yet. It's waiting… for the right first sentence."
