—
Everyone gathered saw something different in those pages.
Jevan saw Aiden—not as he was, but as he could have been, had he been given rest.
Elowen saw the scripts her mother had buried beneath silence, now unburied and humming.
Lys saw a version of herself that had never been broken—and yet, somehow, still held every fracture with grace.
Miry, from the driftwood citadel, wept without shame as she saw a harbor that could float, carrying stories that could not yet swim.
And the twins—
They saw each other.
Fully.
For the first time.
—
The door didn't lead out.
It didn't even lead forward.
It led within.
And across.
And between.
Because the next stage of the Garden was not expansion.
It was interweaving.
The stories of the world had started to respond to one another.
Not through battle.
Not through conquest.
Through call and response.
A universal echo.
A choral reply.
—
In time, word spread—not by mouths, but by dreams.
