The void, once a hunger without name, had changed.
It no longer pressed at the Garden's edge like an encroaching silence.
It became something gentler.
The Breath-Between-Chapters.
The Pause-That-Holds-Promise.
It waited, not to end stories, but to frame them.
And through its waiting, it taught the Garden a truth few stories ever knew:
That endings were not erasures.
They were inviting spaces.
Lys led a caravan of Unspoken from the northern wastes, guiding them with a thread of living memory—a new craft, spun from echoes and offerings. Along the way, she taught them not how to arrive, but how to be ready.
"Not every path must lead to a climax," she told them, tracing her fingers over the still-soft air. "Some are meant to meander."
One of the Unspoken, a boy whose name was only a shape in breath, pointed to the sky. "What happens when we forget again?"
Lys smiled, touching the thread at her wrist. "Then someone else will remember for you. And you will remember for them."
