CHAPTER 25: THE GARDEN THAT GROWS BACKWARD
There are places within the Rift where time is less a river and more a vine—twisting, looping, rooted in futures long buried and pasts yet to bloom. One such place was the Garden of Ruen.
None knew who had planted it. Some said it was the First Warden, a child of both starlight and rot. Others claimed it bloomed from the bones of a fallen god whose final prayer had been for mercy. What was certain, however, was that nothing there grew forward. Every stem curled inward. Every blossom bloomed toward its own seed. And every visitor left changed.
The Spiral called the group again. Not with urgency this time, but with ache.
"This is not a summons," Lyen whispered, fingers tracing a ripple in the Lens. "It's a… confession."
Ashriel looked toward the horizon where the Realms thinned. "The Spiral wants to show us something. Or someone."
Kael, quieter than usual, nodded. "Someone it couldn't save."
They entered the Garden at dusk. Or perhaps at dawn. It was impossible to tell. The sun was both rising and setting at once, casting long twin shadows that curled like question marks across the weeping grass.
Lucien stepped first onto the petal-strewn path. Each step he took seemed to erase footsteps behind him—but plant memories ahead.
"I remember this place," he murmured.
"You've never been here," Lyen said.
"That's what I thought."
A stone arch appeared—formed of twisted roots, still dripping with dewdrops that hissed when they hit the soil. Beneath it stood a woman made entirely of bloom and bone. Her hair was ivy. Her eyes, closed.
"The Gardener," Elaris whispered.
The woman opened her eyes. She looked at each of them and spoke:
"You walk among echoes and scars. Do you come to prune, or to plant?"
"Neither," Lucien said. "We come to understand."
The Gardener blinked. A petal fell from her cheek.
"Then understand this: The Garden grows in grief. Every stem is a story abandoned. Every thorn, a memory unresolved. You cannot walk here and remain unchanged."
Ashriel stepped forward. "What is it we must see?"
The Gardener turned and gestured toward the center of the Garden. "The Seed That Waits."
They followed her through paths that folded in on themselves, where trees grew rings from the inside out and rivers ran uphill but flowed backward in time. The further they walked, the more fragments they passed—half-formed dreams, orphaned decisions, discarded identities. Lyen saw a version of herself as a mother. Kael passed a swing with no child. Lucien heard his own voice, younger, saying, "I swear I'll never forgive them."
Finally, they reached the center.
There, suspended in the air, hovered the Seed. It pulsed like a heart trapped in amber.
Inside it… was a boy.
Unmoving. Unaged.
Kael froze. "That's… me."
The others turned.
Elaris narrowed her eyes. "He's younger."
Lyen touched the Lens. "That's not just you, Kael. That's the part of you that never grew up. The part that made the choice to feel nothing. The moment you severed yourself from the world."
Lucien looked closer. "He's stuck."
"No," Kael said. "He's hiding."
The Gardener's voice floated to them. "This Garden shelters all the moments that could not survive the world. You have one chance. Free him—and risk becoming him. Or let him sleep, and keep what you've become."
Kael stepped forward.
"No," Ashriel warned. "You don't know what you're inviting."
"I do," Kael whispered. "Because if I don't… the Hollowed will return. Stronger. Because the boy inside that seed? He's the first of them."
Lyen gasped. "He's the source."
Kael nodded.
"I wasn't just cursed. I cursed myself. The moment I chose silence over pain, I created a void so deep it echoed across realms."
He touched the Seed.
And it shattered.
The Garden went dark.
Silence pressed in.
Kael stood before the boy version of himself, who blinked slowly, then looked up at him.
"I remember everything," the boy said.
"So do I," Kael replied.
The boy reached out. Kael took his hand. The two forms merged—not violently. Not with anguish. But with weight.
Kael staggered.
Then stood taller.
His wings darkened, but grew finer. His ink no longer dripped—it flowed, luminous and alive. His voice trembled.
"I… am not a curse."
The Garden bloomed.
Trees shot skyward, backward. Flowers opened toward roots. Streams turned silver. The air filled with the scent of healing.
The Gardener smiled.
"You have grown backward, to go forward."
Ashriel approached Kael. "Are you still… you?"
Kael turned, smiling faintly. "I'm whole."
Lucien looked at the others. "Then we know what this was. Not just a revelation. A warning."
Elaris nodded. "The Hollowed weren't an enemy. They were an invitation. To reclaim the self."
Lyen whispered, "To forgive even the silence we once chose."
The Spiral sang in the distance.
A new path opened.
And the Garden, now awake, watched them leave—its blossoms humming with the stories they would one day return to plant.