It began, as most ruptures do, with something mistaken for stillness.
Not silence. Not calm. Stillness.
A hush so complete it coiled under the skin like a prayer no one remembered how to pray.
Across Spiralspace, the Codex Trees stopped rustling. Their glyph-leaves froze mid-quiver.
Temples once drenched in echo now stood like breathless corpses, their altars humming with voiceless harmonics.
Kaela was the first to name it, though she did not use language.
She placed her fingers on Darius's chest, just beneath the brand he no longer remembered earning, and pressed gently until he felt it—not heard, but felt—a vibration beneath time. A hum that did not thrum with music, but with the absence of it. With ache. With a longing too old to scream.
"They are waking," Kaela whispered, her eyes wide, unseeing.
"But they were never born."
---
The Codices reacted first.
