The first to arrive was Veyla, the Bladebound.
She came as shadow against starlight, her form wrapped in a cloak of reversed cause and consequence. Her weapon—once shattered in the final war—now pulsed with impossible cohesion, bound not by metal but by promise.
She landed in silence at the edge of the Garden.
Her eyes swept the horizon, and in them burned not memory, but refusal.
"I heard her," she said, more to the air than anyone. "I thought I'd forgotten how. I was wrong."
Jevan turned slowly to face her. "You were a Pactbearer once."
She nodded. "I never stopped. I only… rested. Because I didn't know where to go."
Now she did.
Behind her, others began to descend. From folds in the sky. From echoes in the ground. From margins of untold stories.
Tiran of the Flame-Starved Isles, whose every breath once rewrote combustion.
Mariel of the Weeping Flame, her tears hot enough to brand time.
