They were pulled again, not by force but by invitation.
The Web of Consciousness had tides, Hector realized. Some days it opened like a breath; other days it folded in on itself, drawing them inward to places forgotten, or perhaps never found at all.
Today, they drifted into stillness.
No wind. No echoes. Just weightless quiet.
Before them stood a cracked stone husk, like an egg left too long beneath a heavy sky. It was split, hollow, but inside pulsed a golden-red glow. Like a heart that had not yet remembered how to beat.
"I think it sees us," Vicky whispered.
The shell shivered.
From within it, a sound emerged: not a voice, but a layered hum. It was made of aborted prayers, paused wishes, and breath held too long. The kind of sound you might make before daring to believe in yourself.
Eia the Seed Forgotten took shape slowly, without form, speaking only through warmth and resonance.
"What was never chosen still lives in the soil of you."
Vicky stepped closer.
Where she walked, the ground bloomed with echoes of herself—flickering shadows showing who she could have been. One ran faster, another had fire for eyes. One walked with a cane, one danced with strangers, one cried into her own hands and didn't wipe the tears away.
"They're all me," she whispered.
Eia pulsed again.
"The future does not die when you pick one path. It waits. Forgotten, but not gone. Use it. Become it. Be the root that remembers what the tree forgot."
Vicky knelt.
The echoes spun around her like leaves. She closed her eyes and reached out not with hands, but with want.
And then something clicked.
She felt her Becoming stretch wider—not just through grief and reflection, but through absence. Through the versions of herself she never lived. Each possibility fed her, deepened her, expanded the range of what she could hold.
The seed opened wider.
A gentle pressure filled the air as the Imprint locked into place. Her soul remembered it.
Vicky rose slowly. Her aura shimmered with potential lives, all of them still breathing in her veins.
"Thank you," she said to Eia.
The seed did not reply. It simply faded back into the ground, glowing in silent approval.
Hector placed a hand on Vicky's shoulder.
"You looked like stars when you were inside it," he murmured.
She smiled, but her eyes were a little wet.
"I felt like all the versions of me that didn't survive got to say something. Even the ones that were scared."
They stood together in the stillness.
And then came the dark light.
At first it looked like a mistake.
A candle made of shadow flickered into being, held in no hand, standing in no holder. Its flame was negative light—not black, but the absence of brightness. It gave off a chill, yet it illuminated what nothing else could:
Scars.
Not on the flesh. On the soul.
Hector felt something twist inside him.
Drosu the Candle Without Flame turned toward him.
Not with eyes. But with attention.
"What is hidden is not always hidden from you."
The shadows shifted.
A version of Hector stood nearby, silent and still. But where others saw nothing, Hector saw it clearly: bruises that weren't visible. Questions never asked. Loneliness that hummed under the surface.
All carried inside someone else.
Drosu continued, its voice neither kind nor cruel—simply true.
"You listen to what is spoken. But you will now learn to hear what is buried."
The candle moved closer.
Hector didn't flinch. He let the cold light pass over him. And what he saw stunned him.
Vicky, standing near him, held no physical wounds. But the candle showed the outlines of grief she hadn't spoken yet. Guilt she hadn't noticed. Old shapes of pain she had let harden in silence.
It didn't make her less. It made her real.
"I see it," he whispered.
And the gift settled.
A new sense unfurled in his chest—a stillness that allowed him to feel what others kept hidden. Not their thoughts. Not their lies. But their burdens.
Invisible, but heavy.
The candle flickered once more.
Drosu said:
"Use this light to guide, not expose. To carry, not reveal."
Then it vanished.
The darkness felt gentler in its absence.
Vicky turned to Hector. "You saw something in me, didn't you?"
He hesitated.
Then nodded. "Yeah. But it didn't change anything. It just... made me want to hold it for you."
She looked away, biting her lip. Then she whispered, "Thank you."
They walked back toward the space beneath the dreaming tree—still lingering, barely rooted in this edge of the Web.
As they sat, a warmth passed between them.
Not romantic. Not yet.
But knowing. Rooted. Shared.
And for the first time, they both understood:
Every version of themselves, every weight unseen, was worthy of love.
Even if it never bloomed.
Even if it was only ever a seed.