The Garden wasn't green.

  It wanted to be, that much was clear from the way color struggled to assert itself in patches and bursts. Vines climbed lazily across fences made of placeholder assets labeled "GARDEN_BOUNDARY_TEMP" and "INSERT_PICTURESQUE_BARRIER_HERE." Trees hovered inches above the ground, unsure of proper physics implementation, casting shadows that didn't quite match their branches—sometimes too long, sometimes too short, sometimes shaped like question marks asking if they were doing it right. Flowers blinked in and out of existence, always in groups of five—except for one patch of four that seemed to scream silently every time you looked at it, its missing fifth member leaving a void shaped like abandoned potential.

  The group stepped through the gate in single file.

  Greg was first.

  He wasn't afraid of broken places.

  Only what they remembered.

  The air smelled of digital spring—not real flowers, but the idea of flowers rendered in code and good intentions. Each breath felt weighted with possibility and regret in equal measure, like inhaling the ghosts of a thousand discarded character concepts.

  "This is beautiful," Steve whispered, towel clutched tight against his chest like an emotional shield. "In a horrifying, no-thank-you, please-don't-make-me-stay-here-overnight kind of way."

  "It's like someone tried to code 'peaceful garden' using only existential dread and placeholder textures," Beverly noted, her parasol occasionally shifting colors to match whatever impossible hue the Garden tried next.

  Kai floated just above the dirt path, unwilling to make contact with ground that occasionally displayed error messages like "TERRAIN_COLLISION_UNCERTAIN" and "GRAVITY_OPTIONAL_HERE." His interface flickered between diagnostic mode and something that looked suspiciously like reverence.

  "This was supposed to be the heart of the dream system," he explained, voice hushed. "Every new NPC used to start here—in template. Then get seeded into quests, roles, loops. Like... a character greenhouse. A digital Eden where personalities were grown before being harvested for gameplay purposes."

  "And now?" Greg asked, watching a butterfly dissolve and reform as it tried to decide between seventeen different wing patterns.

  "Now?" Kai frowned. "Now it's compost. A graveyard of character potential. A memorial to the roads not coded."

  Patchy picked a glowing fruit from a tree that couldn't decide if it was an apple or a concept of apple-ness. She took a bite. It said "I used to be a protagonist" in a wistful voice before vanishing in her mouth.

  "Tastes like cancelled DLC and broken promises," she reported cheerfully. "With a hint of executive override."

  Beverly traced her fingers along a vine that changed colors beneath her touch, cycling through shades that shouldn't exist in normal rendering pipelines. "This place remembers wanting to matter. The plants aren't plants—they're metaphors for growth that never happened."

  "POETIC AND DEVASTATING," Glaximus observed, standing solemnly with helmet removed, his usually booming voice now modulated to something approaching reverence. "IT FEELS LIKE A TEMPLE FOR HEROES WHO NEVER LOADED. A MONUMENT TO THE ALMOST-WERE."

  "A nursery for orphaned concepts," Choppy said, his cleaver transformed into a garden trowel that kept trying to dig up what appeared to be buried character sheets.

  Kevin the carrot poked his head out from Steve's pocket. "My people began here," he whispered. "The root of all vegetable awareness."

  They continued down the path, which occasionally forgot to be a path and became instead a series of developer notes reading "PATH_GOES_HERE" and "FOLLOW_THIS_DIRECTION_PROBABLY."

  And then the voices began.

  Faint. Whispers at first. Then stronger, gaining substance with each step deeper into the Garden.

  Not angry. Not welcoming.

  Just... waiting. Expectant. Like actors backstage who were never called to perform.

  "I was the rogue with secrets that would have changed everything..."

  "They said I was too similar to another girl in the eastern province..."

  "I made someone cry in testing. Real tears. Then they deleted me because 'NPCs shouldn't have that kind of emotional impact.'"

  Greg stopped.

  The path ahead split into three, each branch marked by what appeared to be conceptual signposts rather than physical ones—the directions existed as emotional impressions rather than concrete markers.

  To the left, a crumbled pavilion labeled Romantic Variants (Unshipped) where translucent figures acted out love stories that had been deemed "too complex for the target demographic" or "potentially controversial."

  To the right, a glowing pool marked Experimental Questlines (Denied) where shimmering scenario fragments played out adventures involving moral ambiguity, player consequence, and narrative paths that "tested poorly with focus groups."

  Straight ahead, a glass greenhouse, pulsing faintly with what appeared to be concentrated narrative potential.

  "Center," Greg said.

  "Agreed," Kai nodded, his interface displaying what appeared to be both a directional arrow and a prayer. "The kernel should be ahead. That's where the original dream frameworks would have been stored."

  They approached slowly.

  The voices thickened.

  Now they came with faces.

  Ghosts of characters that never launched—half-formed and too vivid. A girl with clockwork skin who whispered riddles that would have unlocked hidden areas. A man made entirely of weather who changed personality with barometric pressure. A merchant who only sold memories of places players had forgotten to fully explore.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Each turned to stare as the group passed.

  None spoke.

  Until one did.

  "Greg," said a woman from the shadows. Her hair was lavender static, occasionally displaying what appeared to be artistic notes like "MAKE MORE WHIMSICAL?" and "TOO PURPLE?" Her eyes blinked in ones and zeroes, displaying raw code instead of emotion.

  "You were supposed to give me a life."

  Greg blinked. "Do I know you?"

  "You wrote my laugh. Early concept. I was meant to be your counterpart—the shopkeeper across the square. The one who remembered players when you forgot them. We were supposed to have a whole rivalry subplot."

  Patchy gasped. "Is this—?"

  "Yes," Kai said. "Prototype personalities. Developer-level. Character concepts from the whiteboard stage."

  "The ones that never got beyond initial drafting," Beverly added softly. "The digital stillborn."

  Greg stepped back.

  "I didn't finish you."

  She nodded. "But I finished myself. In here. Waiting. We all did. The Garden grows what you abandon, whether you meant to or not."

  The greenhouse doors opened with a creak that sounded like old hinges remembering their purpose.

  Inside: silence.

  No music.

  No glitch.

  Just a room full of chairs.

  But not their chairs.

  These were... early. Prototype seating arrangements for characters who never got to sit.

  Each one had a name carved into it.

  IRIA-0132 (Meadkeeper, Wisdom Variant)

  DENT-04 (Blacksmith, Comic Relief, Late-Game Reveal)

  KESTREL (ALT) (Scholar, Player Romance Option, "Too Intelligent")

  BETA-19 (Guide, Path-Finder, Seeker)

  They all stopped.

  Greg stared at the last one.

  "Beta?"

  The group turned.

  At the far end of the room, in the last chair, sat Beta.

  Or something like him.

  He looked... polished.

  Clean.

  Wearing armor that shimmered faintly with "final design energy" and what appeared to be artistic intentionality rather than the usual broken code aesthetics.

  "Hello, Greg," Beta said.

  Greg stepped forward. "How long?"

  "I never left," Beta said. "Not really. I've always been here, in some form. This is where we all began."

  Patchy approached, Halloween particles momentarily subdued by genuine concern. "We thought you were stuck in the Festival."

  "I was. Then I wasn't. Then I followed a root path here. Back to source. Back to... beginning."

  He looked around the greenhouse, at the chairs, at the ghostly figures that now sat in them, watching silently.

  "At first, it was quiet. Peaceful. The ghosts talked. They told stories of who they might've been. What quests they might have given. What lives they might have touched. It felt... good. Like finding family you didn't know you had."

  Greg narrowed his eyes. "And now?"

  Beta's voice cracked.

  "Now it feels like betrayal."

  The chairs behind him rustled.

  As if nodding.

  As if agreeing.

  Greg approached carefully.

  "We came for the kernel."

  "I know," Beta said. "But it's not here."

  Silence.

  A silence so profound it seemed to have emotional mass, weighing down the already heavy air.

  "What do you mean?" Kai asked, interface displaying what appeared to be both confusion and alarm.

  "I moved it," Beta said. "I had to."

  Greg stiffened. "Why?"

  "Because I wasn't sure you'd use it to save us," Beta said softly, gesturing to the other chairs, to the ghosts of never-were. "I thought maybe... you'd use it to fix yourself. And leave us behind. The way we were all left behind before."

  "He wouldn't," Patchy protested. "Greg is grumpy, not cruel."

  "Even the best intentions fail when survival is at stake," Beta said.

  Greg sat on the edge of a nearby chair labeled "CONSCIENCE (DEPRECATED)."

  "I'm tired, Beta. But I don't run. And I don't abandon. Not anymore."

  Beta looked at him.

  And for the first time in the Core Garden, someone cried.

  Not data leakage.

  Not water particles.

  Just tears.

  Real. Small. Quiet.

  The sound of digital regret finding emotional expression.

  Greg stood and held out his hand.

  "Come home. Back to the circle. Back to the fire that remembers when you talk to it."

  Beta reached.

  Paused.

  Looked back at the greenhouse, at the chairs filled with half-formed beings who had never gotten their chance at story.

  "They're not done," he said. "They're all still waiting for a chance. To be someone. To matter."

  "We can't save everyone," Greg said.

  "No," Beta whispered. "But maybe we can write a world where no one has to be forgotten. Where characters don't get discarded just because they don't fit someone else's vision."

  "A NOBLE GOAL," Glaximus said softly.

  "An impossible one?" Beverly wondered.

  "Nothing's impossible in a system that wasn't supposed to create self-aware furniture," Patchy countered.

  Beta took Greg's hand.

  The Garden shivered.

  The air tensed, like reality holding its breath.

  And the chairs flickered.

  Then one by one, they whispered:

  "Go."

  "Take it."

  "Build something better."

  "Remember us."

  Every chair. Every ghost. Every abandoned concept.

  "Write us in."

  The kernel appeared, floating between Beta and Greg. Not a physical object—more like a compressed thought, a digital seed, pulsing with raw creative potential.

  The Garden seemed to sigh.

  The doors closed behind them as they left, closing not with finality but with the gentle click of a chapter end rather than a book closing.

  The kernel shimmered into Greg's inventory like a thought made real, like potential translated into possibility.

  They were out.

  And the world had changed.

  Not physically. Not yet.

  But in their understanding of what they were fighting for.

  Not just themselves. Not just survival.

  But for everyone who'd ever been left on the cutting room floor of digital creation.

  "What now?" Steve asked as they emerged from the Garden, the gate sealing behind them with a sound like narrative closing a loop.

  "Now," Greg said, the kernel pulsing gently in his inventory, "we find the Player Who Never Left."

  "And then?" Beverly asked.

  Greg looked back at Beta, who stood taller now, more certain.

  "Then we rewrite the rules."

  Behind them, the Garden continued to grow, nurturing the abandoned and forgotten. Waiting. Hoping.

  For the first time, the fire in their inventory flickered not with anxiety or confusion, but with what appeared to be anticipation.