The field where they emerged had no name.
But it was soft, and open, and kind.
The sky stretched wide above them, full of unassigned stars. The grass whispered things it hadn't decided yet. Even the wind moved with a gentleness Kael hadn't felt since he first found the egg.
Echo stretched, the glyphs on her fur fading into quiet spirals. Tama opened her sketchbook and started drawing what she couldn't describe.
Kael sat cross-legged, the blank book in his lap.
And he realized:
This was the first place he'd ever seen
that looked like a story before it became one.
He began writing again.
Not about glyphs.
Not about battles or riddles or riddled pasts.
Just… people.
People who might walk here.
People who needed a space between pages.
People who had too many "almosts" and not enough "arrivals."
And then, on the third morning, someone found him.
A shadow cast over the journal.
Kael looked up.
A girl stood at the edge of the field, wind tugging at her sleeves.
She had a satchel slung over her shoulder.
Hair in a loose braid.
And eyes like someone who dreamed ahead of herself.
"Sera?" Kael asked, standing.
She nodded.
"I heard the story opened."
Echo padded to her slowly.
Sniffed her palm.
Then sat beside her.
Tama stood behind Kael, watching with quiet curiosity.
Sera stepped forward.
"I didn't just come to see it," she said.
"I came to enter."
Kael blinked.
"You mean…"
"I want to walk inside it," she said. "Not read it. Not write it. Just… live in it."
Tama tilted her head. "No one's ever asked that."
Sera looked between them.
"Isn't that what it's for?"
Kael sat back down.
Motioned for her to join him.
She did.
Echo curled between them.
He opened the blank book.
Held it toward her.
And said:
"Then choose your first page."
Sera held the book for a long time.
Then pulled out a small pencil from her satchel — the same kind Kael used as a child.
And she wrote:
Sera stood at the edge of the story.
She did not ask to be written.
She only asked to be received.
The field shimmered.
The wind paused.
And the world agreed.
From that moment forward, the field grew.
Not with buildings or cities.
With paths.
Lines of intent.
One curved gently toward the horizon. Another led toward a grove of unbloomed trees. A third looped inward like a spiral — as if meant for someone still deciding what shape they were.
Tama walked the inward path.
Echo followed the grove.
And Kael stayed with Sera.
"I don't know what comes next," he admitted.
Sera smiled.
"Good," she said. "Then I can help you write it."
That night, they lit a fire of soft-white moss. The sky filled with stars Kael didn't recognize. Not from memory. Not from prophecy. Just new light.
Sera wrote her own chapter beside him.
Tama sang a verse with no melody.
Echo lay against the fire's edge, humming in her sleep.
And Kael, for the first time, didn't feel like the bearer of anything.
He just felt like the welcome.