The garden had remembered how to breathe.
It did so slowly, as though respiration itself were something that had to be coaxed back into the world rather than assumed, the leaves opening with the careful patience of living things reacquainting themselves with light.
The sourceless glow that belonged to this place returned not in a flare but in a gentle seep, illumination bleeding softly along bark and stone and soil until shadows reformed in their accustomed shapes, until the air regained the warm stillness that seemed less like temperature and more like reassurance made physical.
Amara stood within it.
She had been standing since the moment the darkness withdrew. She had not sat, had not rested, had not permitted herself the luxury of processing what had happened beyond the smallest practical margins required for continued function.
