The seed pulsed once more.
Then split—not with violence, but with intention. Its facets did not crack; they unfolded, revealing layers of light, not illumination. Meaning. The kind that arrived before thought. Not a beacon, not a signal—but a proposal.
And from within stepped a figure.
Not a being.
A sentence.
Wrapped in flesh, woven from tense and tone, it walked on legs that bent like metaphor and breathed with the rhythm of unfinished poems. Its eyes glimmered with punctuation marks—no pupils, only pause. Every footstep it took pressed a single glyph into the soil, which then dissolved into blooming possibilities.
No name.
No history.
Not yet.
It had arrived to become.
The Pact gathered quickly, wary but unarmed. This was not war. The Garden would not suffer another battle so soon. It thrummed with uncertainty, yes, but not rejection.
Elowen approached the figure first, her hand raised in greeting.
"Are you... from the Seed?" she asked, her voice cautious, reverent.
