The morning mist clung to the ground like a second skin when she arrived.
Small. Light-footed. Wrapped in a shawl of woven reeds.
She didn't follow a path.
She didn't introduce herself.
She didn't need to.
Kael saw her standing at the edge of the field, watching the willow tree where Galen's journal had been planted. Her hands were empty, but something shimmered between her fingers — not a gift, not a letter.
A seed.
Small.
Irregular.
Pulsing faintly with color Kael couldn't name.
He approached carefully.
Echo stayed close, her head low but calm.
Tama and Sera watched from the fire, not speaking, letting the world turn at its own speed.
Kael stopped a few steps away.
The girl turned.
Her eyes were deep, the color of rain-soaked stone.
She lifted her hands.
Held out the seed.
And without speaking, asked:
Will you plant what you never had?
Kael took it carefully.
The seed was warm.
Not with heat.
With intention.
The girl smiled — not joyfully, not sadly. Just… truly.
Then she turned.
And walked back the way she came.
Without leaving footprints.
Without breaking the mist.
Without needing to be remembered.
Kael stood there for a long time.
Turning the seed in his palm.
Feeling the hum of something unwritten.
Echo leaned against his side.
"She left you a choice," she said.
Tama joined them, sketchbook tucked under one arm. "Do you know what it will grow into?"
Kael shook his head.
"No."
Sera approached, soft-footed.
"Maybe that's the point."
They chose a spot not far from the willow.
A place where two paths crossed — not sharply, but like a conversation interrupted by laughter.
Kael knelt.
Dug a small hollow with his hands.
And placed the seed inside.
As he covered it, the ground pulsed once.
A low vibration, barely enough to stir the grass.
But enough to stir him.
Nothing happened immediately.
The soil lay still.
The field moved on.
But Kael felt it — a thread of memory tugging forward rather than backward.
Something preparing to bloom.
Something he had never lived.
That night, Kael dreamed.
Not of battles, or glyphs, or endless wandering.
He dreamed of a house built low to the ground, with wide windows and crooked shutters.
A garden filled with mismatched stones.
A crooked mailbox with no name on it.
Inside:
A table set for three.
A kettle singing softly on the stove.
Echo curled in a sunbeam by the door.
And laughter.
Not loud.
Not constant.
But real.
When Kael woke, the sky was heavy with mist.
He sat up slowly.
Echo stirred beside him.
Tama and Sera were still sleeping.
He walked alone to the spot where he had planted the seed.
And found a sapling.
Small.
Twisting.
Its bark shimmered with faint glyphs — not Unown, not scripts of old.
New ones.
Ones Kael didn't know yet.
He knelt beside it.
Placed a hand on the trunk.
The sapling spoke, but not in words.
In feeling:
Here is the life you never lived, but always hoped for.
Kael didn't cry.
But he stayed there a long time.
Breathing.
Listening.
Receiving.
Because sometimes the stories that heal you are not the ones you survive…
But the ones that simply welcome you.
Later that day, Sera asked him what the tree was.
Kael smiled.
"It's a home that waited for me to believe it could exist."
Tama wrote its description into the archive.
Echo curled around its roots at dusk.
And Kael wrote a small sign to place beside it:
The Memory You're Still Allowed to Grow.
Travelers began gathering around the sapling in the evenings.
Not to worship it.
Not to guard it.
Just to be near it.
Some left offerings:
A sketch of a meal never cooked.
A lock of hair from a sibling not born.
A poem about a birthday party that never happened.
The sapling accepted everything.
It grew, slowly, without demanding anything back.
Kael sometimes sat under its young branches with his journal open on his knees.
He didn't always write.
Sometimes he just closed his eyes.
And imagined.
Not to escape.
Not to correct the past.
But to believe forward.
That night, before sleep, he wrote:
Some memories arrive too late to be lived.
But not too late to be loved.
And closed the book with a soft sigh.