The Grievance roared, its form splitting into countless fragments, each resembling a torn page soaked in ink and regret.
The sky above the garden darkened, the mist spinning into a vortex.
From its depths came half-formed voices shards of old characters, their cries jagged and broken:
"Why did you abandon me?"
"I was meant to be a hero…"
"I only wanted an ending…"
Each voice carried pain, and each one twisted the air into razor-thin currents of despair.
The garden's petals shriveled, their soft humming faltering.
Oscar gritted his teeth.
"It's trying to drown us in every mistake I've ever made."
Lyra stepped forward, her blade of light dissolving into a glowing harp-string of memory.
"Then let's remind them they were never forgotten."
She plucked a single note and from it bloomed visions of the past: moments when these characters, these fragments of stories, were alive.
A child in the mist froze, seeing themselves as they once were laughing in sunlight they had never thought they'd feel again.
Lyra's voice carried:
"You were loved, even if your tale wasn't finished. You mattered, even if the ink stopped flowing."
The mist recoiled, threads of it fraying under the weight of her truth.
Origin, silent until now, extended her hand. A flame of pale blue fire formed in her palm not fire that burned, but fire that remembered.
She knelt and pressed the flame into the soil of the garden.
The roots shivered. The trees began to glow.
"This garden," she said, "is not just for new dreams. It's for you, too. You are not broken pages. You are unwritten verses, waiting to sing again."
The Grievance howled, but its voice faltered. The mist seemed to hesitate, as if longing for something it could not name.
Oscar closed his eyes, drew a breath, and stepped between Lyra and Origin.
"I was wrong to think every story needs an ending. What you needed was not a final page… but someone to believe in your beginning again."
He knelt, pressing his hands to the trembling earth.
"Then let's write together. Not as author and character, but as equals."
The ground beneath him pulsed with golden light. The ink-like shadows of the Grievance began to swirl around his hands, not attacking, but drawn into the warmth of his voice.
The towering shape wavered, flickering between rage and yearning.
"I… don't want to be forgotten."
"You won't be," Oscar whispered. "Not if you let us remember with you."
The jagged pages fell from the figure like feathers, each one glowing faintly. They drifted into the garden, sinking into the soil like seeds.
The mist thinned.
For a moment, silence returned not heavy this time, but gentle.
Flowers opened wider than ever before, petals shimmering with colors not yet named. The sky brightened, a swirl of starlight cascading above the treetops.
The forgotten souls who had watched the battle stood in awe.
Lyra sheathed her glowing strings, breathing deeply.
"Did we win?"
Origin shook her head softly.
"No. We didn't win. We shared."
Oscar smiled faintly, looking at the fragments of the Grievance now rooted in the soil.
"This is only the beginning of a harder story the story of healing."
The fragments of old, unfinished tales villains, heroes, nameless wanderers were no longer shadows. They had taken form again, stepping from the soil as if waking from a long sleep.
One approached Oscar. A woman made of ink and starlight.
"Will… will I have a place here?" she asked quietly.
Oscar knelt to meet her gaze.
"If you have a story, you already belong."
The garden awoke as though it had been holding its breath for centuries.
The petals of every flower trembled in unison, releasing glimmers of starlight like dew.
The sky—no longer just blue—shimmered in layers of gold and violet, as if painted by unseen hands.
And then, without a voice, the song began.
It was not music in the way mortals understood.
It was the hum of roots drinking dreams.
The pulse of stars beating in time with countless hearts.
The whisper of every story that had ever wanted to be told.
Oscar felt it not in his ears, but in his chest—like a forgotten lullaby his soul had known before he was born.
---
The Choir of Petals
Lyra closed her eyes, clutching her harp-string blade.
Her voice wavered as she whispered,
> "It's… singing to us."
The petals danced upward, swirling into constellations. Each petal was a memory, a hope, or a moment that had once been lost but now glowed with meaning.
One petal brushed against Oscar's hand. He saw, just for an instant, a vision of a young girl learning to walk—a story never told because its author had died before writing it.
The garden was remembering for them.
The garden was giving voice to all who had been silenced.
---
Origin's Realization
Origin stepped forward, her pale blue flame still flickering softly in her palm.
Her expression—so often guarded—was wide with awe.
> "This… this isn't my creation."
"It never was," Oscar said gently.
Origin turned to him.
> "Then whose?"
Oscar smiled faintly, as the stars above shifted into new constellations.
> "Everyone's. Every being who ever dreamed but was never heard. The garden is theirs."
The song shifted, growing louder—not with sound, but with feeling.
It wasn't a melody but a language, a chorus of emotions too deep for words.
It carried a promise:
We are not forgotten. We will bloom again.
The forgotten characters, the shades of ink and starlight, began to kneel tears, or what resembled them, falling like tiny gems from their eyes.
One of them, the woman of starlight who had spoken to Oscar, whispered,
"This place… it feels like home."
But then, as the song reached its peak, something stirred beyond the boundaries of this reality.
The garden's song was not contained.
It rippled outward through dreams, through time, through the void between worlds.
And something answered.
A distant echo, like the sound of a drum in an infinite cavern. A rhythm older than creation itself.
Lyra's breath caught.
"What is that?"
Origin's eyes darkened slightly.
"Something that was sleeping… and now knows we are here."
Oscar stood in the center of the garden, the golden light from the soil wrapping around his feet like roots.
"Then let it come," he said softly.
"If it has a story, we will listen.
And if it has none, we will give it one."
The garden seemed to approve its petals lifting high into the heavens, forming a radiant crown of light.
But beneath the beauty, Oscar felt it:
The new story being written was not just theirs anymore.
A new chapter, vast and untamed, was being born.