The wind howled, but the pages did not turn.
Not by accident. Not by fate.
But by will.
Elari stood on the precipice of a world that still remembered fear. Behind him, the Garden held its breath—if such a place could. The petals of the newly grown towers glistened with dew, and echoes of countless rewritten tales rustled like leaves in the memory of the soil. The vast narrative that had been channeled through the Blank Sky Pact was no longer held together by gods, nor rules carved into existence by first scribes, but something more terrible and beautiful:
Choice.
He looked down at his hand, the Pen of Becoming held between two fingers. Its ink shimmered as if stained with the distilled essence of decision.
The silence was not empty anymore.
It had shape. Weight. It begged him to write. To act.
But the Reader was still gone.
The Reader Who Did Not Arrive Late—yet had not arrived at all.
