Sprout Tower stood taller than he remembered.
Not physically — its spine still leaned slightly from the old tremors, its sacred wood weathered and groaning in the breeze. But there was a gravity to it now. A presence. Like the tower itself knew he had returned.
Kael stood at the gate with Echo at his side, the sun climbing slow and gold behind them. The pendant Galen had left him — the one from the early days — sat against his chest, warm under his shirt. Beneath it, in his satchel, were two journals:
One for himself.
And one for Isen.
The monks at the gate didn't question his presence.
They only opened the door.
Inside, the air was steeped in old incense and dust. Familiar.
Kael moved through the hallways quietly, his footsteps soft against worn wood. Echo didn't speak, but she watched everything — the corners, the alcoves, the places where shadows held memories.
They passed the training chambers.
The meditation room.
The scorched beam that still bore a curl of black from the fire all those years ago.
When they reached the central atrium, Kael stopped.
The great spiral beam still turned overhead, creaking gently — an eternal movement. Always bending. Never breaking.
The monks sat in quiet circles around the room, but one broke from the rest — a woman Kael recognized by the way she stood, hands folded over her robe.
"Tama's sister," Echo said quietly.
The resemblance was soft now, weathered by time. But it was there.
She approached with quiet purpose.
"Kael," she said, her voice like autumn wind. "You've been seen. All the way to the mountains."
He nodded. "I didn't come to disturb your peace."
"You came to end something," she replied. "Or begin something else."
They sat beneath the spiral beam, Echo between them.
Kael placed the journals in front of him.
"This tower," he said, "was built to move. Not to fall. Not to hold still. But to bend."
The monk nodded. "So the spirit doesn't break."
"But the memory did," Kael said. "It broke. Over and over. And we just kept worshiping the cracks."
He pulled out Galen's pendant, laid it on the floor.
"I came to leave something behind," he said. "Not for ceremony. For correction."
He opened the journal he'd started in the early days — the one that held the glyphs, the questions, the dreams, the fragments.
And he began to read.
Not every page.
Not every pain.
Just enough.
Enough for the monks to hear Galen's fear.
Enough for them to understand Echo's origin.
Enough to show them that memory wasn't sacred because it stayed the same — it was sacred because it could change.
And when he reached the entry where he wrote Ashen's name, Kael looked up and said:
"You can't keep folding stories inward forever."
"At some point, they collapse."
The monks listened.
They did not chant.
They did not correct him.
They simply heard.
Afterward, the woman stood.
She picked up the journal with careful hands.
And said:
"We will keep this."
"Not to hold it."
"To grow from it."
Kael nodded once.
"That's all I wanted."
She gestured toward the spiral.
"You still carry your own path. The next part isn't here."
"I know," Kael said.
Then he hesitated.
"There's something else."
He pulled out the second journal.
Isen's.
He held it close for a moment.
Then offered it to her.
"It's not history," he said. "Not yet. But it's real. And it's asking to be spoken."
The monk accepted it.
Not as a keeper.
As a promise.
They left the tower as the bell tolled once — not for ritual.
For recognition.
Outside, the light had shifted.
Not warmer.
Just clearer.
Kael breathed it in like something long forgotten.
At the edge of Violet City, Kael stopped to rest beneath a tree. Echo lay beside him, eyes half-closed, sun warming her back.
He pulled a blank page from his satchel.
And wrote:
Chapter 40: The Root of the Spiral
He smiled.
And beneath it, scribbled a note:
If you return to the beginning, bring a seed.
Not a torch.
That night, the monks read Isen's journal aloud for the first time.
The spiral beam groaned gently above them.
And somewhere, far beyond the sea, a boy without a past dreamed of things he hadn't yet done.
And in his dream…
Kael smiled.