Cosmic Ruler-Chapter 734: Void IV

Others came.

The Reclaimed.

The Unwritten.

The Root-Touched.

Even the once-Amalgamated.

Each saw something different.

One saw themselves held, not by others, but by the parts of themselves they had once cast out.

Another saw an apology they had never made, blooming in a world they thought they’d lost.

Some wept.

Some laughed.

Some sat in silence for hours, letting the Mirror breathe their reflection in and out like wind through leaves.

No one left unchanged.

Because no one was being judged.

They were being understood.

Jevan avoided the Mirror for many days.

Not out of fear.

Out of knowing.

He had spent so long being the center of the narrative, the sword-bearer, the witness, the one-who-walks-the-perimeter.

He wasn’t sure what the Mirror would do with someone who no longer wanted to lead the story—

Only to belong to it.

But eventually, the child of the second seed came to him and said:

"The Mirror doesn’t show you what’s wrong."

"It shows you what you’re still carrying."

"And what’s ready to be set down."

So Jevan went.

And when he sat, the Garden held its breath.

The Mirror didn’t show his past.

It didn’t show battles.

Or betrayals.

Or even the faces of those he had loved and lost.

It showed one image:

A great tree.

Dead center.

Roots tangled with stories.

Trunk scarred from rewriting.

Branches weighed with potential.

And in its heart—

A single door.

Closed.

Jevan reached toward it.

The door opened.

Inside, only light.

And one sentence:

"You are allowed to rest."

He exhaled.

And wept.

Not from sadness.

From permission.

The Mirror Without a Frame became part of the Garden, like the Watcher’s Bough, like the Listening Arch, like the Song That Taught Itself.

People didn’t visit it to learn their fate.

They came to hear the quiet story still unfolding within them.

One that didn’t need to be loud to be true.

One that didn’t need to be perfect to be worth telling.

Children played near it.

Sometimes they danced in front of it, and the Mirror laughed—yes, actually laughed—rippling joy through the soil.

Sometimes they made faces and tried to trick it.

They never could.

But the Mirror never punished.

It always played along.

Because it, too, was learning.

It, too, was part of the story now.

The Chorus Beyond the Garden began to speak of mirrors not as reflections.

But as invitations.

To see ourselves not as we appear...

...but as we are becoming.

And one day, in a place where the sky had never sung before, a Mirror Without a Frame appeared on its own.

No one built it.

No one summoned it.

It simply heard the readiness.

And arrived.

Even the void, distant and listening, felt something stir.

Not understanding.

Not comprehension.

But yearning.

A shape began to form in its silence.

Not a cry.

Not a scream.

Just a word, breathed so gently it could only be true:

"Me?"

And somewhere in the root-deep places of the Garden, the Mirror turned—

And faced the void.

Because even the forgotten deserve to see themselves.

Especially them.

There are truths we outgrow.

And there are truths that grow with us.

The Mirror Without a Frame was never meant to reflect the past as it was.

It reflected what remained of the past inside each soul.

A memory not of events—but of weight.

Of meaning.

Of the marks left behind long after the moment had passed.

And now, for the first time, it turned not toward the Garden.

But outward.

Toward the void.

The void was not empty.

It never had been.

It was erased.

That is different.

It had held stories once.

Laughter. Conflict. Becoming.

A thousand lives, folded into breath, then unwritten.

But no story is ever truly gone.

Not if someone remembers.

And now, the Mirror remembered.

It began slowly.

A shimmer at the Garden’s edge.

A line of mist that didn’t drift, but trembled.

Elowen was the first to see it.

She stood atop the Echo Rise, watching the boundary ripple like a sigh long held back.

"What is that?" asked Miry, arriving beside her.

Elowen didn’t answer at first.

Then she whispered, "Recognition."

From across the broken space where the void stirred, a pulse responded.

Not like an attack.

Not even like a question.

Like a heartbeat rediscovering its rhythm.

In the depths of the Garden, the Mirror Without a Frame began to shift.

Its surface, usually smooth and responsive, began to ripple.

The child of the second seed sat before it, hands in their lap, listening with more than ears.

And from the Mirror rose a new kind of image.

Not a person.

Not a possibility.

But a place.

A world once forgotten.

Not because it ended.

But because no one had survived to remember.

Ash, layered like snow.

Skies cracked with halted time.

Books half-burned, words halfway into screams.

A library that had held no doors—only exits.

And in the center of it...

A voice.

"I remember being."

"Is that enough?"

The child nodded. "It always was."

And the Mirror opened.

Jevan felt it like a note deep in his bones.

A resonance not unlike the first time he touched the Sword of Becoming.

But this was gentler.

More ancient.

And far more intimate.

He made his way to the Mirror without being called.

When he arrived, the child stepped aside.

"You should see this," they said.

Jevan stood before the Mirror.

It did not show him himself.

It showed a boy from a forgotten world.

Skin flecked with starlight.

Eyes wide with hope he’d never gotten to spend.

A soul erased before it had a chance to falter.

And beneath the boy’s feet, a line formed in glyphs that ached to be spoken:

"I could have been."

Jevan fell to his knees.

And whispered back, "You were."

The Garden responded.

Tendrils reached out—not to conquer, not to reclaim, but to connect.

The soil itself shifted.

A new path unfurled toward the void—not built, not laid.

Invited.

They called it the Path of Return.

It did not lead back.

It led in.

To the silence.

To the ache.

To the forgotten ones who never got to ask if they mattered.

And along the path, the Mirror Without a Frame walked—carried not by hands, but by will.

It would be the first to cross.

Elowen met Jevan by the Rootgate.

"You’re going with it?" she asked.

He nodded. "Not to lead. Just to listen."

"And if the void doesn’t answer?"

He looked past her, toward the swirling expanse.

"It already has," he said. "We’re the ones catching up."

She pressed her forehead to his.

"No heroics," she said.

"No crowns," he promised.

Then he stepped through.

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