But the story could not rest, not even then.
For just as the Grove drew breath again—ink-scented and polyphonic, humming with the tremble of countless near-forgotten truths—a new sound reverberated through the soil of meaning:
Tick.
Tick.
Not the tick of time.
Of measurement.
Of serialization.
> "Episodes," murmured the Unchronicled, recoiling.
"Updates," muttered the Patchwritten.
"Quotas," spat the Rewritten.
The cadence was artificial. A cadence not born of urgency, but expectation.
From the periphery of storyspace, marching in loops of constraint, arrived the Continuum Consortium.
Their creed: engagement must never wane.
They bore clocks instead of hearts, and their armor was stitched from subscriber counts. Their leaders—the Binge Curators—spoke in analytics and breathed in content loops. They saw the Grove not as threat, but missed potential.
> "Fertile, but fragmented," said one, adjusting their feedback-lens.
