There are places in the soul that do not grow with time — they wait.

And the 5th House, where Alcarion now entered, was just that: a secret garden of creativity, love, and joy — buried under years of silence, but still blooming beneath.

He arrived in twilight, the air perfumed with forgotten songs. At the gate stood a slender figure robed in sea-foam and moon-silver: Elarien, Keeper of the Past Flame — a priestess of the South Node, known here as GAD.

“You have been here before,” she said, “though you may not remember.

This is where your first light came from —

the place where you first played, first loved, first dreamed of becoming more than a name.”

And inside?

There were echoes of past lifetimes:

– A child composing lullabies from birdsong

– A poet painting oceans in caves

– A performer whose stage was moonlit cliffs

These weren’t fantasies.

They were ancestral memories, drawn from Alcarion’s soul-ink — the essence of Pisces, mutable water, memory, and magic.

At the heart of the garden stood Fomalhaut, not as a being, but as a fountain — a sacred source of divine inspiration. Its water shimmered with every idea that had ever gone unspoken, every dream dismissed too soon.

Elarien led him there.

“To go forward,” she said, “you must bless what you once abandoned.

The artist you were must meet the guide you’ve become.”

Alcarion bent to the fountain and drank.

And then it began —

the remembering.

The overwhelming wave of beauty that he once feared was too much,

the love that frightened him with its depth,

the muse that once left because the world told him to be quiet.

Now, she returned.

And she was no longer a whisper —

She was a chorus.

In the days that followed, Alcarion began to play again — not to teach, not to impress, but simply to be.

He danced barefoot with his students under full moons.

He wrote songs in nonsense languages just to make them laugh.

He created puppet shows for invisible gods.

And slowly, the people around him began to loosen too — even the ones who had forgotten how to dream.

Because joy — when real — is contagious.

And Alcarion had remembered his true joy was never a reward.

It was a return.

PART XV: The Forge of Flame and Flesh