Chapter 185
The Garden's Beginning
Elenwe walks the path through the mist, following the child's laughter to a garden that is both beginning and end. There she finds a loom shaped like her own hand and hears the child's true voice, which reveals the final cost of the pattern.
The mist clung to Elenwe's skin, cool and damp, carrying the scent of moss and stone and something green that had never fully opened. The path beneath her feet was grey stone, worn smooth by no footfall she could measure, and the white blossoms that lined it glowed faintly, as if lit from within by a light that had no source.
She walked. The golden door on her palm remained open, a small round aperture through which she had stepped, but the world behind her had vanished. There was only the path, the blossoms, and the mist that parted just ahead of her steps, closing again behind.
The child's laughter came again, not from any direction, but from the air itself—a sound like wind through clover, like water over stone. It carried no words, only a melody that Elenwe recognized as the song she had sung into the dead loom, the same tune that had filled the empty circle.
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