Threads We Didn’t Know

They didn’t speak right away.

Not because there was nothing to say—
but because something sacred had just arrived,
and speaking too soon would shatter it.

The echoes hadn’t faded.
They hovered.
Soft outlines of other lives lingered at the tree line,
woven from light and the hush between heartbeats.

Cero stood very still, eyes closed, arms slightly open.

“I thought we were here to start something,” Kai finally said.
“But I think it already started. Before us.”

Sienna nodded, hands folded in front of her like a quiet prayer.

“We’re just the ones who heard it back.”

Orion walked the circle’s edge, dragging his fingers across the mossy stones.

“Echoes aren’t just memory,” he said.
“They’re invitations. And warnings. And sometimes… blueprints.”

Cairo had taken out his notebook again—
not to draw or decode—
but to write what he was feeling before it faded.

But nothing faded.

Each of them carried something now.
A thread. A flicker. A trace of one of the lives they’d glimpsed.

A woman’s laugh over boiling tea.
A rope pulled in rhythm from a well.
A lullaby sung into soil.
A farewell said at a threshold not marked by doors.

Cero opened his eyes.

“I think they left them for us.”

Kai looked over.
“Who?”

Cero tilted his head, listening to something no one else could hear.

“The ones who shaped this before it had a name.”

And as he stepped out of the circle, something changed.

Not the air. Not the light.

The weight of the clearing.

It no longer felt like a place to visit.
It felt like a place they’d come from.

Even if they had never been here before.