The Garden had known many voices.
It had once whispered peace, under skies woven with birdsong and the breath of a thousand old myths.
It had once roared defiance, roots rising like spears against the Unwritten tide.
But now, it listened.
The Seed Jevan carried was not of this world, nor of the one before it. It pulsed with a rhythm not set by time, but by choice. Not destiny, not prophecy, not even rewritten law. It was older than all those. And it had taken root in him.
He walked the inner paths of the Garden like a prophet without a god, soil parting under his bare feet. He did not step on the earth. He stepped into it.
And the soil answered.
Not with words.
But with remembering.
Every footprint echoed backward, stirring fragments of Aiden's first writing—the language of becoming. Vines bowed, bark shifted, flowers curled into sigils he did not recognize but somehow felt. They weren't reacting to Jevan himself.
They were reacting to what he carried.
What he was.
