Look back, and see how far a heart has come.

At twenty-one, Seraphine was entrusted with the ancient Rose Gate of Everbloom Vale — the youngest keeper in three generations.

Turned her family's overgrown plot into a public Heart-Garden where anyone in the Vale can plant a bloom for someone they miss.

I lost a whole letter to the wind today — pressed roses and all. I told myself it was gone. Then, three moons later, a stranger from the coast returned every petal, dried and pressed between two pages of a ship's log. I have not stopped thinking about the lanterns in his eyes.

He lights a lantern every night for people who have not come home yet. Tonight he handed me one and asked me to light the next. I think that was his way of saying: you are one of the people I am waiting for now.

Finished the little skiff for Ondine's naming day. Painted a rose on the prow — do not ask me why. She launched it at dawn and sang the whole way across the bay. Building things that carry people you love home is the only craft I ever wanted.

Caelum built a fleet of rescue skiffs that has never lost a soul to the storms of Tideheart Cove.

During the Long Dark, Ember rekindled the kingdom's eternal flame single-handedly, earning the title Warden of the Great Hearth.

I threw a cinder into the sea, expecting it to die. Instead it floated, still glowing, right to where she was singing. Fire is not supposed to survive the tide. Maybe some things simply refuse the rules they were given.

We stood at the Great Hearth and each cast a cinder for the other. The Warden is not supposed to make vows at the flame she guards. I made one anyway. Some fires are worth the breaking of a rule.

Ember and Ondine cast their cinders together at the Great Hearth — the first vow ever made by a Warden at her own flame.

There is a new star cluster above the isles, and every line I draw between its points leads to the same garden gate in Everbloom Vale. The sky does not lie. Some bonds are written before we ever meet the person.

Lyra completed the inaugural volume mapping the invisible threads between hearts across all five regions — a work now studied by every young cartographer.

After a blight, Rowan coaxed the ancient memory-paths of Lumenwood back to life, saving the forest's living archive of the world.

The forest paths rearrange for those lost in thought. Today they led me, again, to the clearing where Lyra first unrolled her star-charts. The bark still glows faintly where she leaned against it. Even the trees keep her memory better than I keep my composure.

I sang the old homecoming song tonight, the one my brother taught me. A traveler on the far cliff sang the second verse back to me — word for word. Two strangers, one melody, the whole cove glowing between us. I felt, for a moment, that no one anywhere was alone.