The bracket hung in the sky like a question that would never be answered.
Not a threat.
Not a promise.
Just possibility, unresolved.
And beneath it, the Garden regrew, slowly stitching back the frayed seams of memory and myth. But something in its roots had shifted—an unease deeper than fear, more haunting than any enemy they had faced.
Because the shape that had passed through them was not just unknowable.
It was unwanting.
And that made it the most dangerous of all.
"We need to seal the breach," Elowen said, pacing the lower sanctum of the Archive of Shared Stories.
The new Archive pulsed with collaborative resonance—threads from thousands of surviving storytellers, entwined into a living document. Its walls whispered with voices that were no longer bound by genre or form. Yet even here, a shadow lingered where no narrative reached.
Jevan stood beside a basin of reflective ink, where future threads sometimes shimmered. Today, it was still.
