> TRANSFER COMPLETE. > WELCOME TO THE LEGACY, ELIAS.

On the day she left, the vine outside the bookshop unfurled a ribbon of leaves that fell like confetti onto the street. A child laughed, and the sound reminded a nearby man of a promise he'd once made and never kept; he went home and called. The roots kept working, trading brightness for darkness, memory for forgetting, pain for repair. Magic, Candy knew, wasn't a solution; it was stewardship. It taught people how to name their losses and carry their gains with the respect each required.