The ground beneath the Garden shifted—not physically, but narratively.
As if reality itself had paused, uncertain of the next line to write.
Above, the sky was a wound sutured with starlight. The clouds moved like erased thoughts, forever on the verge of coherence. Birds no longer flew—they glided between versions of themselves, caught between what they were and what they might have been.
At the heart of it all, the Pact gathered beneath the boughs of the Everbranch—a tree grown from the first rewritten word. Its leaves shimmered with text too ancient to pronounce, each a phrase that had once guided worlds.
They stood in silence, encircling the Fragment.
Not quite friend.
Not quite ghost.
But something sharp enough to cut truth from story.
He crouched beside the roots, one hand pressed to the soil. His ink-stained fingers trembled as they touched the narrative seams buried deep within the Garden's foundations.
"They're thinning," he murmured.
