It did not shine.
Not yet.
It did not speak.
Not in words.
But across the high sky, just beyond the reach of the Garden's tallest branches, the third constellation began to stir. It was not a grouping of stars, not truly—more a pattern of absence, a geometry carved out of silence. A space where something should have been, and wasn't.
Yet.
The Claimed had begun to transform the Garden—not as conquerors, nor architects, but as witnesses. Where they walked, the trees shifted subtly, exchanging familiar forms for stranger ones: leaves shaped like punctuation marks, bark that unraveled into threads of unwritten dialogue.
And beneath their feet, the soil grew layered—each footprint sinking through timelines, pressing into sedimentary strata of what might have been.
Jevan moved among them silently, letting the Mark on his palm glow only when necessary.
Sometimes, it warmed on its own.
Especially when he looked upward.
At that place in the sky.
Elowen noticed first.
