The pattern did not repeat exactly.
That was the first thing Arvella understood.
If it had, she might have been able to measure it, to fall back on the instinct to observe and compare, to treat what was happening as a sequence of events that could be predicted if she watched carefully enough.
But nothing behaved that way anymore.
The fractures did not follow each other.
The responses did not align.
And Selena—
Selena did not move because something happened.
She moved because something needed to be met.
The following morning, the garden did not feel the same.
The convergence ran cleanly beneath it, as stable as it had ever been, threading through the soil, the roots, the edges of stone and air with the same quiet certainty it always had.
But the space around it felt… layered.
As
