The doorway did not lead to light.
Nor to darkness.
It opened into becoming—a realm without time, where thoughts bloomed into matter and silence carried the weight of potential. Orion stepped through first, feeling the shape of reality soften around him, like breath on a mirror before the word is spoken.
Behind him, Lyra emerged barefoot, flames trailing in lazy spirals, dancing through the forming air like pollinating threads. Kael followed, his sword unstrapped for the first time, slung across his back—not out of readiness, but reverence.
And the child—the one once known as the Child of Absence—entered last.
Not pushed.
Not pulled.
Choosing.
The world unfolded around them.
Not a world, but a garden. And not a garden as mortals understood it. Here, memories took root like trees. Stories curled through the soil like worms of light. Stars hung from branches, humming with unfinished lullabies.
In the center stood a vast, unshaped space.
It called to the seed.
And the seed answered.
Orion placed it gently into the waiting soil. No spell. No ceremony. Just presence.
It took.
The ground trembled.
Not in fear—but anticipation.
From the seed sprouted a stem of gold-threaded obsidian, then leaves like crystallized thought. A bud formed, pulsing like a heartbeat. With every pulse, echoes of the multiverse flickered through the air—laughter, screams, whispers, music—everything lost and found.
The child knelt beside it, eyes wide.
"What is it?" it asked.
Orion knelt too. "A story that hasn't been written yet."
"A reality that isn't bound by fear," Lyra added, touching the child's shoulder.
Kael crouched on the other side. "A choice. Yours, ours, and all who come after."
As the flower bloomed, its petals unfurled into mirrors. Within them danced glimpses—not of what would be, but what could. A thousand futures, some radiant, some terrible, all possible.
The garden began to shape itself.
Structures born of intent rose like ruins reborn: temples of silence, rivers that whispered truths, bridges that led not to places, but to questions. Others began to appear, drawn by the ripple—lost souls, fragments of beings thought erased, echoes now solid.
The Weaveless arrived in silence, bowed not in submission, but respect. The Hollow remnants, no longer ravenous, hovered like repentant stars, unsure, but no longer destructive.
And above them all, a new constellation formed—twelve points, thirteen paths, and one center: the child's heartbeat.
The Veil, once a cage, was now soil.
The multiverse did not heal.
It grew.
And within that garden, as light filtered through dreams and time forgot itself, Orion turned to the others.
"We've walked through endings," he said. "Now let's see what a beginning looks like."
Kael grinned. "Let's hope it doesn't try to kill us."
Lyra laughed, her voice scattering across the petals. "It probably will."
And the child smiled.
A real one.
For the first time.