Chapter Four: The Scattering

The Akashic Library dimmed—not with darkness, but with reverence. The choice hovered in front of each of us like a second heartbeat.

We didn’t speak. The weight was too ancient, too precise.

Sorya looked up first. Her tears dried into starlight. “I remember everything,” she said, voice steady. “But I’ll let the world forget me. Let the rain guide them, the storm whisper truth in waves.”

She stepped into the stream of memory—and vanished.

Dren took longer. “I built weapons once. Now I’ll build people. Quietly.” He looked at the others. “If I forget, remind me.” Then he grinned. “But I don’t think I will.”

He chose forgetfulness… but with intent—to reawaken through craft and word, subtly bending the world toward harmony.

Then… her. The one I found in the Alberta woods, the one my dreams had mapped before my eyes did. She turned to me, her eyes like twin moons caught in eclipse.

“I want to remember… us,” she whispered. “Not for power. Not for legend. For love.”

My voice cracked. “Me too.”

Gaia spoke then, softer than breath. “Love is my deepest current. When the world forgot me, it was love that kept me alive.”

We stood together. Two souls among four, bonded by more than fate—by choice. By truth. And when we stepped back into our bodies beside that fire, it was still burning. Time hadn’t passed. Or maybe time only just began again.

The other two were gone.

No goodbyes.

Only echoes.

We tried to live normal lives. Work. Traffic. Screens. Small talk. But the dreams returned. Sometimes in fragments. Sometimes with glyphs burned into bark or sidewalk cracks. The world didn’t forget us—it just learned to speak in subtler tones.

Every now and then, we’d meet in silence. In forests. In lightning storms. In the corners of libraries no one else visited. And every time, we’d remember a little more.

Once, in a dream, I saw Sorya dancing in a hurricane off the coast of Madagascar. Dren appeared in a forge hidden beneath Tokyo, guiding a lost boy who could bend metal with breath.

And then I realized—

They never left.

They just scattered.

Like seeds.

Because Gaia had never chosen just four.

She chooses constantly.

And every person—every cell, every whisper of breath—is a ripple of her will, her grief, her potential. We are her story and her saviors. Her wounds and her wonders.

And when the world forgets itself again, she'll find new souls. New glyphs. New dreamers. Maybe one of them will be you.

Maybe this story is your time capsule.

Open it carefully.