The twin moons had not moved since the day she took the shadow's mark.
They hovered in their dead stillness above the city like two eyes that refused to blink, their silver gaze an unending appraisal.
But tonight, their stare sharpened.
Codexia first noticed it when she returned to the high steps of the Codex Hall. The crowd below had thinned, but those who lingered kept glancing upward with an unease they could not name. A child tugged at their mother's sleeve, pointing at the sky.
The moons were not merely glowing anymore—they were writing.
Threads of white light crossed the void between them, slow and deliberate, as though an invisible hand were dragging quills dipped in starlight. Each beam etched a line, a curve, a hook. The strokes did not fade; they layered, weaving symbols that shifted the longer she looked at them.
From one angle they were language. From another, a judgment rendered in silence.
The Codex inside her pulsed with quick, hot recognition.
