At first, there was only the soil.
Dry. Cracked. Tired.
It did not welcome her hands, nor reject them. It merely was. A canvas scraped bare. No memory of roots, no echo of water. Just the echo of something once scorched, now cooling into stillness.
Lys knelt at the base of the scar—the place where the moons had once crossed and died—and she dug. With fingers, not tools. There was something sacred in the simplicity. Something honest in the pain of each handful.
She did not know what she was planting.
Only that she must.
It wasn't hope.
Hope was a currency she no longer believed in.
Not after Sevrien's silence.
Not after Keiran's disappearance.
Not after the moons blinked out like spent stars.
No, this wasn't hope.
It was responsibility.
The world had been shattered by gods and remade by ghosts.
But someone had to begin again.
And so—
She planted.
A stone.
Smooth. Gray. Insignificant.
It was the last thing she'd taken from the old world.
Not from a vault. Not from a ruin.
From a pocket.
Left behind by a boy with hollow eyes and no name. The same boy who once whispered, "I'm not him," and became something more.
Keiran.
The Solituded One.
The one who burned without flame and walked between the echoes.
She pressed the stone into the earth.
"Not a grave," she whispered.
"Not a monument."
"A beginning."
The ground was still cold.
The sky still blank.
But something shifted.
Not light.
Not warmth.
Not sound.
A stillness that hummed.
Lys sat back, dust crusting her knees, and waited.
She wasn't expecting magic.
Or resurrection.
Or celestial signs.
Only… change.
Even if it came small. Even if it came slow.
The days passed strangely.
Time was no longer measured by sun or moon.
Only breath.
Only step.
Only the rhythm of movement against silence.
She explored the edge of the world, where the last corners of Concordium had fallen—its libraries drowned in fog, its watchtowers leaning like drunks left to rot in their armor.
No one came back.
Not the Seven.
Not the Thirteen.
Not even the Ash-Crested ghosts who once kept vigil at the edges of memory.
It was just her.
And the stone.
And the ground that remembered something ancient and unspoken.
Then, on the seventh day—
She saw it.
A crack in the soil.
Hair-thin.
Barely there.
But it hadn't been there before.
And from within: green.
A whisper of life.
Not a bloom.
Not a tree.
Just a tendril.
Reaching.
Lys knelt beside it. Not daring to breathe.
It wasn't possible.
The world was dead. The laws broken. The Severance undone. This place should have remained sterile. Empty. Scarred.
And yet—
Here it was.
A single green thing.
Defiant.
Patient.
Reaching not toward a sun, but toward the future.
She laughed then.
Not loud.
Not cruel.
A sound worn and soft. Like a truth rediscovered.
Because the moons were gone.
The doors were shut.
The gods silenced.
But life?
Life did not care for myth.
Life only knew to continue.
Even through ruin.
Even through memory.
Even through grief.
She touched the leaf.
It did not burn her.
Did not wither.
It bent toward her skin, as if it recognized the one who'd waited. The one who had not asked for this duty, but had taken it anyway.
Not a hero.
Just a keeper.
In time, the sky began to ripple.
Colors returned—strange and unnamed, like the sky was trying to remember what blue had once been.
In time, the wind returned—soft and unsure, carrying no scent but brushing her cheek like a forgotten lullaby.
In time, she stopped waiting for others.
Because they would not return.
Not the dead.
Not the crowned.
Not even the Solituded One.
But she was not alone.
Not now.
The seed had taken root.
And that meant something could grow.
And what grows, changes.
And what changes, becomes.
She named the sprout: Keiran's Rest.
Not to bind it to him.
Not to make it holy.
But to remember.
That something had been sacrificed.
That someone had chosen to vanish so the world could breathe.
Even if no one else ever knew.
Even if no histories were written.
She marked her calendar in stones. One for each day since the scar began to close. By the 30th, the sprout had formed two leaves. By the 50th, roots broke through stone. By the 70th, a second shoot appeared.
By the 100th, birds returned.
Not the ones she remembered.
Not the crows who once whispered curses.
But small ones. Silver-feathered. Curious.
One nested in the crook of her shoulder one morning. Slept there.
When it woke, it chirped once—and flew off.
She did not cry.
But something inside her unclenched.
By the 200th day, she found another person.
A girl.
Barefoot. Mute. Covered in ash.
Not Concordium. Not cursed. Not blessed.
Just lost.
Like her.
Lys led her to the garden that had grown over the scar.
The girl knelt.
And wept.
Not from pain.
From recognition.
The world had not ended.
It had begun.
Not with fire.
Not with gods.
Not even with memory.
But with a seed.
And silence.
And the ones who remained behind to plant what no longer had a name.