Chapter 1615

The forest didn't challenge them. It honored them.

When they stepped from the trees, the sea stretched wide and open, sparkling beneath a violet-tinged sky. The sand glowed faintly underfoot, kissed by the same golden pulse that marked their skin. It wasn't the same beach. Not really. It had evolved like they had. But the bones of it remained - the crashing surf, the smooth curve of the cove, the fallen log where they had once sat, lost and wondering.

They chose a place near the water's edge, just above the tide line. The ground there was soft, the sand warm, the air full of salt and songbirds.

Jude knelt, the others forming a circle around him.

He placed the seed in the sand.

It pulsed once - bright, golden, alive.

Then he pressed his hands to the earth and began to bury it, slowly, reverently, layer by layer, until only a faint shimmer remained where it had been.

As soon as he lifted his hands, the ground pulsed.