Silence had once been a wound.
A space where stories went to die.
A place where names unraveled.
Where voices called out and nothing answered.
But not here.
Not anymore.
In the Garden Without a Center, silence was not an absence.
It was another kind of language.
Not the opposite of story—
But its soil.
They discovered it slowly.
A girl from the Reclaimed Isles, born of a drowned verse, had been mute her entire life. Not from fear. Not from magic. Just… born between words.
She was called Syra.
One afternoon, she wandered alone into the Grove of Forgotten Names, where roots dangled like questions from the sky. There, she found an old book, pages blank, its cover soft with moss.
She did not open it.
She sat beside it.
And the book began to write.
Not in ink.
In light.
Each word that formed wasn't legible in the usual sense. They were impressions. Images. Feelings wrapped in rhythm. A story told in breath, in presence, in quiet knowing.
She smiled.
