Elowen and Yemra had climbed the Tower of Refrains, where threads of all past songs hung freely.
Wind moved through them like breath through a flute.
"Do you hear it?" Elowen whispered.
Yemra closed her eyes.
"It's not a song," she said. "It's what comes before the song."
The tower exhaled.
And the air hummed with something older than melody:
Possibility.
In Shelter-for-All, a baby was born who did not cry.
She breathed.
Her first inhale pulled warmth from every corner of the room.
Her first exhale caused the stone beneath her to soften, moss to grow at its edge.
"She carries the first breath," someone whispered.
"No," said Miry, smiling.
"She carries forward."
Elsewhere, far beyond the visible Garden, in a stretch of Wastes where time once refused to move, a man woke.
He was not remembered.
He had not died.
He had simply paused.
Long ago, before the first rewrite.
Before Aiden.
Before erasure found shape.
His breath returned slowly.
One.
Then another.
