The colossal tree groaned faintly, its branches stirring as though they were alive, stretching into places where the air itself seemed to breathe.
Its roots pushed deeper through cracks in reality, curling into voids no mortal eye would ever see, wrapping themselves around the bones of old worlds.
The laughter of the two women who had sat playing on its branch had already faded, but its echo lingered anyway, clinging to the marrow of space itself like smoke that refused to vanish.
Meanwhile, far away from this space, in a place that seemed small by comparison yet carried its own weight, another silence waited.
Lilith's study wasn't vast, not when measured against the halls of gods or the endless limbs of the world-tree, but it didn't need to be.
