A week after the note sang from the Spiral Grove, the orchard began dreaming.
It started subtly. A Memory Tree swayed in still air. A vine hummed without wind. Dreambinders found themselves waking from dreams they hadn't entered, soaked in the scent of rain that hadn't fallen.
The Heartroot pulsed not only beneath the ground but in the sky. Its rhythm lingered in cloud-shapes, in firelight, in the way shadows stretched before fading.
Tian Shen felt it first as a tension in the chest, like a bowstring drawn but not loosed. Not painful—promising.
That morning, Myrrh approached him beneath the Echoing Walk. She looked pale, her Dreamscroll wrapped tight in both hands.
"The orchard's dreaming us," she whispered.
Tian Shen blinked. "What do you mean?"
She opened the scroll.
It was blank. Then words appeared.
Tian Shen's name. Then Lan's. Then Ji Luan's. One by one, all who had walked with the Unfinished, all who had planted seeds of maybe.
And at the bottom:
