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Chapter 175 - The Next Tellers

The garden did not close.

It opened wider—beneath the feet, between the ribs, across the gaps where words had once been swallowed and never returned.

From the soil of the Archive-turned-Garden, new growth unfurled—not roots nor branches, but mouths.

Not grotesque.

Not monstrous.

Just… waiting.

Mouths that had once belonged to the ones who were never quoted. The child silenced in the classroom. The elder whose accent was mimicked but not heard. The patient who named their pain but found it redacted.

They bloomed now, not to speak—but to listen.

And from deep within their petaled lips, came the echo of voices thought extinct:

> "Do you still remember me when you create?"

> "Will you build something I could have lived in?"

> "Can you write without needing to win?"

The Grove answered not in speech—

—but in invitation.

A circle formed, marked not by hierarchy, but by heartbeat. The silence returned again—but it was no longer empty.

It was sanctuary.

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