Garden VIII

The glyph did not shimmer.

It pulsed.

Not with light, but with anticipation—a thrum in the quietest fibers of the Garden, in the breath between names, in the soil beneath footsteps not yet taken.

All across the woven territories—driftwood citadels, refracted groves, memory halls—people looked up and felt it at once:

Something was about to begin.

Again.

But not like before.

Not with a bang or a breach or a blade.

Not with Jevan's sorrow or Elowen's memory or Lys's quiet choosing.

Not even with the seed-child's radiant invitation.

This beginning didn't start with a voice.

It began with space.

A soft wind moved through the Watcher's Bough.