Aiden met them in the clearing, voice calm but iron-bound.
"This is the Convergence," he said. "Not the end. Not the beginning. But the meeting place of all that persists."
The ground quaked gently.
Jevan looked down.
His tether pulsed once.
Then again.
Then—
Snapped.
It didn't break.
It released.
A loop unwound from his wrist, spiraling upward into the air, forming a ring of written light. It hovered above him, spinning faster and faster, until it split into dozens—then hundreds—of glyphs.
Each one bore a possibility.
Each one was for someone else.
Jevan turned to Aiden.
"I was only the door," he said.
Aiden smiled.
"No, Jevan. You were the invitation."
The glyphs scattered into the sky.
Some fell gently toward the Pact.
Others vanished into waiting timelines.
Some pierced the ground, rooting new stories into the Garden's soil.
And one—
—just one—
—spiraled upward, beyond even the stars, to where the One Who Watched But Never Spoke still lingered.
