And so the Garden, for the first time, made a place for Discord.
Not to quiet it.
But to contain it.
The Circle of Unechoed Songs was grown—an open glade with no root-paths leading in. You had to refuse something to enter. A belief, a certainty, a story you no longer wished to carry.
Those who stepped inside emerged changed.
Not always in ways they wanted.
But always in ways they needed.
Miry, the matron of Shelter-for-All, entered once and returned saltless. Her grief had unhooked itself from her spine and drifted into the sky.
"I don't know what I believe anymore," she said afterward.
"Then your belief is ready to grow," replied the child.
The forest answered with silence.
Not absence.
Listening.
—
But further east, beyond even the Garden's new boundaries, something else had begun to stir.
The Unheard.
A collective of voices that had been discarded not by silence, but by compromise.
