They didn't speak much on the way back. The Tower's presence still clung to their minds like dew that refused to dry. But Elliot couldn't let go of one particular image—splintered fragments of stone shaped like petals, buried in fields of grass long overtaken by time.
Lyra stopped abruptly at the edge of the ravine trail. "There," she pointed. "Do you see those patterns on the slope?"
Elliot squinted. A soft shimmer crossed the earth—barely visible lines arranged in loose circles, some half-faded, others almost etched into the soil itself.
"They're gardens," she said. "Old ones."
He crouched near the edge. The spacing between the patterns, the structure—it matched the layout of their own garden. "You think these were like ours?"
"I don't think. I know." Lyra pressed her palm to the ground, and a thin vine sprouted from her fingers, touching the soil like a key fitting a lock. A wave of green rippled outward, and for a moment, the landscape changed.
They saw it—not just imagined it, but truly saw it. The hill lit with traces of forgotten plant beds, small stone totems, tools buried and broken. A place once thriving with cultivation, now left to sleep under layers of silence.
Elliot's breath caught. "How many of these do you think are out there?"
"Dozens," Lyra replied. "Maybe hundreds. Before the Stillfall, this world was full of gardens like ours. Some peaceful. Some... not."
Elliot ran his fingers through the awakened soil. "Why did they disappear?"
Lyra hesitated. "Because not all seeds are meant to bloom forever."
They moved onward, following the ghostly path through the woods. Occasionally, they stumbled upon fragments—half-buried markers, rusted irrigation conduits, bits of glass shaped like dew. But the most curious object was found beneath a gnarled root cluster: a piece of bark etched with lines almost identical to those in the Tower.
Elliot turned it over. "It's... encoded. Like a journal. But plant-made."
"Maybe a memory," Lyra whispered. "The trees were record keepers too, in their own way."
They sat beneath one of the few still-living trees nearby, letting the silence stretch.
Then Elliot spoke. "If there were so many before... why did no one ever speak of them?"
"Maybe they did. But voices fade. Especially when the world forgets how to listen."
A gust of wind stirred the tall grass around them. Tiny seed pods lifted into the air, dancing briefly before drifting away on invisible currents.
Elliot watched them vanish into the clouds. "Then we remember for them."
Lyra smiled faintly. "Yes. One garden at a time."
As they stood to leave, Elliot pocketed the etched bark. The garden they'd built was never alone. It had ancestors. Maybe even siblings. And some, perhaps, were still watching from beneath the soil.