At the center of it all—the Garden, the Counter-Garden, the mingled rootline—stood the Book With No Center.
It had no spine.
No start.
No end.
Its pages grew like petals.
And within it, stories wrote themselves in interlocking spirals. One would begin with a scream and end in laughter. Another would start with silence and end in breath. Others looped endlessly, each reading changing the next.
It could not be read by one alone.
Only by many.
Only aloud.
Only together.
Jevan stood before it, then stepped back.
"I'm not the one to speak it now."
And the child stepped forward.
They did not open the book.
They listened.
And when they spoke, they said only this:
"If this story is real…
Then we must write it together."
And from across the chorus of lives, of gardens, of ghosts and glyphs and gods…
Came the answer.
Not in words.
But in music.
The song—fractured, joined, reshaped—rose again.
And this time…
It stayed.
Before the story could be told, it had to be heard.
