Nathaniel arrived as dusk turned gold.
No announcement.
No fanfare.
Just the slow click of boots on old trail markers and the soft shift of wind that meant something familiar — something once part of the beginning — had returned.
Kael was in the orchard glade with Echo and Tama, tending to the Memory Tree Maie had planted near her path. The branches were beginning to curve now, not from weight, but from intention.
Kael looked up as soon as the footsteps reached the ridge.
His breath caught.
Echo stood.
Tama smiled faintly.
Nathaniel looked exactly as Kael remembered — and nothing like him at all.
The gray had moved through his beard.
His coat was newer.
His eyes, however, had aged beyond time.
He carried one thing.
Wrapped in cloth.
Tied with thread.
When he reached Kael, he didn't speak right away.
He simply handed it over.
Kael took it gently.
Unwrapped it.
And froze.
It was his journal.
The first one.
The one from the earliest days — before the field, before the archive, before Echo had learned to speak in glyphs.
Before even Galen's pendant had begun to glow.
Worn leather.
Frayed stitching.
Still sealed.
Nathaniel spoke.
"I kept it for a long time."
"Didn't read it."
Kael looked up, stunned.
"You didn't?"
Nathaniel shook his head.
"You gave it to the archive as a record."
"But it wasn't ready to be a chapter yet."
"It was still a question."
Kael sat.
Echo leaned against him, her eyes fixed on the journal.
Tama crouched nearby, sketchbook forgotten.
Kael opened it.
Page one:
His handwriting.
Slightly panicked.
Messy.
A list of names and glyphs.
Then, a question scribbled over them all:
Am I doing this for me, or for the ones who couldn't?
Nathaniel sat beside him.
Not across.
Beside.
And asked:
"Do you know now?"
Kael ran a finger across the edge of the page.
Then nodded.
"I think… I did it for both."
Nathaniel smiled.
"That's allowed."
They read together for an hour.
Kael didn't skip the embarrassing entries — the parts where he questioned everything, where he blamed Echo for being too quiet, where he wished the glyphs had never come.
He didn't skip the angry ones, or the hopeless ones.
And when he reached the one page that simply said:
I don't want to carry him anymore.
(Galen)
He paused.
Echo leaned closer.
Kael looked at Nathaniel.
"I thought writing it would make me feel guilty."
"It didn't."
Nathaniel replied:
"Because you didn't let it be the end of the sentence."
They sat beneath the stars after that.
Sera joined them later, handing Nathaniel tea and a scarf Maie had made for "the person who watched from the beginning."
He laughed when he saw it — a swirl of buttons and ribbon and glitter.
"She said it makes you more 'story-shaped,'" Sera said.
Nathaniel wrapped it around his shoulders without question.
"Then I suppose I am."
The next morning, Kael stood before the archive shelf labeled:
Unfinished Starts
And placed his journal back where it belonged.
Still unread by anyone but him.
But now… closed with intention.
Echo asked:
"You're not keeping it?"
Kael smiled.
"I'm making space."
That afternoon, Nathaniel walked with Kael to the edge of the Listening Path.
They didn't speak much.
But just before they parted, Nathaniel turned and said:
"One day, someone's going to ask you how it ends."
Kael tilted his head.
"And?"
Nathaniel grinned.
"And you're going to realize — it only ends when you stop letting new ones begin."
He offered a handshake.
Kael pulled him into a hug instead.
"Thank you," he said.
Nathaniel's voice cracked.
"Thank you for proving it was worth archiving before anyone believed it."
That night, Kael wrote in a new journal.
Not the old one.
Not the field's.
His.
On the first page:
This is not where the story starts.
But it might be where I finally decide how to tell it.
Not to prove anything.
Not to be remembered.
Just to be present while it's becoming.