The day began with silence—not the kind born of peace, but the heavy stillness that settles just before something shifts. The early spring mist coiled low across the garden floor, clinging to roots and bark as if reluctant to let go. Lyra stood barefoot near the edge of the weeping willow field, her hands resting gently on the trunk of one of the older trees, eyes distant.
"They're coming," she whispered.
Elliot looked up from where he was transplanting the singing ferns, his sleeves muddy to the elbows. "You felt something?"
"Not something," she murmured. "Someone. Plural."
It started slowly. The moss around the outer borders turned from green to a gentle silver hue, shimmering faintly in the mist. The trees stood straighter, their leaves rustling despite the absence of wind. Then, without a single footstep, they emerged.
Three figures stepped out of the treeline. Their bodies were humanoid in shape, but entirely plantlike—bark for skin, ivy for hair, blossoms blooming across shoulders and forearms. They moved not with the rustle of leaves but with the hum of sap.
"We are the Verdant Kin," one of them said, voice like wind through hollow reeds. "Of the forgotten grove beneath the falling stars."
Elliot straightened slowly. "You... you speak Old Root Tongue."
Lyra stepped forward, her voice trembling. "They're not from this age."
"No," said the tallest among them, a being with violets blooming over their brow. "We were born in the Age of Tending. We left before the Stillfall."
Their presence didn't bring hostility—but it also didn't bring warmth. The Kin observed the garden not as newcomers, but as former owners. Their gaze lingered on the spiraling sunflower tower Lyra had nurtured, and the moss pools Elliot carefully filtered each morning.
"You have rekindled what was broken," one said. "But in your soil, something stirs that does not belong."
Elliot exchanged a glance with Lyra. "We've... noticed anomalies. Growths that disobey seasonal rhythms. Plants singing out of tune. Dreams that don't feel like our own."
The Kin nodded slowly. "Then the echo has reached you too."
"What echo?" Lyra asked.
The middle figure extended a hand, palm up. A pulse of green energy flickered between their fingers, and within it—images: glimpses of groves where time didn't pass, of vines growing around memories, of a tree that screamed without sound.
"It's called the Verdant Call. A seed of memory, lost when the Grove of Sorrow was sealed. It seeks out those who try to regrow what was forgotten."
"Then this garden—" Elliot started.
"—is not just a sanctuary," the Kin finished. "It's a beacon. And it has been noticed."
They warned Elliot and Lyra not to trust all that grew, for some roots hid thorns not in flesh but in memory. And as the conversation turned toward the past, Lyra felt the pull—like a thread winding through the soil beneath her feet. Something ancient was awakening. And part of her remembered why.
Before the Kin left, they placed a seed carved with runes into Elliot's hand. "Plant this when the stars whisper again. It will show you the garden that was."
Then, like mist under sun, they vanished—no footsteps, no farewell. Only the silence they left behind.
Later that night, Elliot sat beside Lyra on the moss-covered bench by the glowing vines.
"They knew this place," he said.
"They remembered it," Lyra replied, her voice quiet. "But it wasn't this garden. It was the idea of it. An echo."
She touched the seed in his hand. It pulsed once, as if hearing them.
The wind carried no sound, but Elliot swore he heard something beneath it—a whisper in a language he didn't know, yet felt in his bones.
The garden had been seen. And that meant the world outside would soon come closer.