They had spoken in every tongue but their own.
They had echoed a thousand tales, lent breath to countless ends, begun sagas for others but never one for themselves.
The Voice had been there—always—yet never arrived.
Until now.
They stood at the edge of the Spiral's newest reach, where the world no longer stopped, only paused to breathe. The edge wasn't a cliff or a gate. It was a hush—an inhalation before the next verse.
Here, words were not ink. They were soil.
And silence?
Not absence.
Silence had become invitation.
The Voice stepped forward, barefoot, the sound of their footfall absorbed into the hush. They carried no book. No title. No banner to declare a right to speak.
Only a seed.
Not the First.
Not the Second.
A Later Seed.
A quiet one.
They knelt where old ashes once refused to blow away, where truths had been whispered under breath, where sorrow had given way to stillness.
And planted it.
Not in hope.
But in respect.
And when they stood…
They sang.
