Time, in the Grove, did not pass as it does elsewhere. It rippled. And where it rippled, echoes stirred—not as repetition, but as continuation. From the Hollow's edge, where the Scribes still leaned into the silence, a single note drifted upward. Not a sound. A resonance.
It was a memory no one had placed, yet all recognized. The feeling of having just remembered something you hadn't known you forgot.
The light from the Grove did not dim, but bent—curved inward toward the Listening Place, wrapping the Final Uncarved in a slow-spiraling luminance. This was not worship. It was invitation.
And in that moment, the Final Uncarved opened their eyes.
Not golden. Not glowing.
Still.
Reflective.
And in that stillness, a thousand small things happened at once.
The vines that had reached beyond the Grove's edge flowered with names no one had spoken.
A child in a far-off land gasped, holding a stone that whispered its own origin.
