The morning of the one thousand and first year dawned with a different quality. It was not the morning of an anniversary. It was the morning of a new era. The thousand years of holding had been completed. Now the garden was entering its next phase. Not an ending. A new beginning.
The current guardians were a pair named Finola and Declan. They were young, the youngest guardians in centuries, but they had been chosen for their vision and their understanding. They had grown up in the garden, had learned the old language and the new, and they understood that the thousand years was not the end of the journey. It was the beginning of something else.
They stood at the source stone that morning, their hands on the glowing symbols. The resonance was different. It was not the resonance of completi
