It began with small changes.
In Shelter-for-All, driftwood etched itself with new stories each morning—ones no one remembered writing.
In the rivers of the Root-Wound, fish began to swim against time, their scales gleaming with words in future-tense.
In the air above the Chorus Grove, songs sang themselves backward—then forward again, in harmony.
The Garden was no longer merely rewritten.
It was being read aloud.
And that made it realer.
It made it contingent.
And dangerous.
Because if someone was reading, then someone could decide it was enough.
And close the tale.
On the forty-first day since the Answer shattered, the first glyph fell from the sky.
Not written.
Not conjured.
It simply fell.
And where it landed, silence bloomed—not the kind of silence that erased, but the kind that asked for reverence.
Jevan held it in his hands.
It was a single mark. A name-glyph. But not his. Not anyone's they knew.
It pulsed faintly.
A summons.
He met eyes with the child.
