The Web was never still, but now it seemed to slow—
as if watching them.
Hector drifted in silence, still humming from within. The resonance gift left by the Whispering Spiral pulsed in his core like a second heartbeat. Wherever he floated, he felt impressions—not sights, but trails. Places where laughter had echoed, or fear had once trembled.
Each emotion left a mark.
He just hadn't realized how many there were.
He followed one thread now, thin and silver, and as he did, he felt a memory bloom through it—sharp, distant joy, then a sudden snap of heartbreak.
He recoiled, blinking into the soft dark.
"Too much?" Vicky asked.
Her form pulsed gently beside him—gold edged in cool violet, her aura steadier now. She had changed since the encounter with Vemathi. Her presence had depth, like she wore layers of light that could peel back and reform.
"No," Hector responded—not in words, but in focus. "Just… raw."
She tilted toward him, her aura flickering thoughtfully. Then:
> "Let's try it."
He understood.
The Web, though endless, was responding. Threads shifted when they moved. The gods had said magic here was not learned but willed. Shaped from inside.
So they began.
---
Hector focused on a single thread—dull red, flickering with long-forgotten grief. He reached out, not to change it, but to listen. A whisper stirred against him. He followed it.
And willed.
A vibration began to form in his light—not sight, not sound. A kind of focused stillness that pressed outward.
The thread lit up.
The echo surged back into him.
Suddenly: he saw.
Not with eyes. But with echo-sense.
A woman sobbing into her sleeve. A child reaching for her with small, uncertain hands.
Gone in an instant, but real. As if he'd found a footprint made of memory.
> "I can see them," he whispered, trembling. "Not who they are. But what they felt. Where it was left."
He had shaped his magic into awareness—not passive, but directed.
He could track resonance now. Not just find it. He could hunt it down, follow its roots, chase the feeling backward through the void.
Vicky pulsed approval. But she was already turning inward.
Her magic was different.
She drifted into a fold in the Web where no light touched. Slowly, she lowered her presence into it. Her form flickered, collapsed, then reshaped—like shadow shifting through layers of water.
From the dark, she emerged.
New.
A shape of herself—not solid, but held together by her will. A grief-shell. Not sadness, exactly—more like a container built from the ache of having too much feeling and nowhere to place it.
She could change her outline, blur her shape, become armor or reflection. Her shell was not escape—it was healing with form.
> "Becoming is remembering," she said. Not sure where the thought had come from.
---
They met again at a quiet thread between stars.
The air (or what felt like air) buzzed softly. They floated in silence.
Then, Vicky turned.
> "Do you remember what the Spiral said?"
Hector nodded. He began to hum—low, uncertain.
It wasn't music.
It was the shape of a memory that hadn't happened yet.
Vicky joined him.
Their voices weren't voices. But the vibrations twined. Grew. Deepened.
They weren't singing to each other. They were building something together.
It wasn't beautiful. It was true.
A song no one ever sang to them.
A song that felt like home.
When they finished, the Web around them shimmered slightly. Threads bent toward them, slow and reverent.
They would forget everything else after birth—names, moments, gods.
But this?
This hum would survive.
Not the notes. Not the sound.
But the feeling.
The code of rebirth.
They touched—light to light.
> "How will we find each other?" Vicky asked.
Hector pulsed. Then pointed.
A faint line of golden hue pulsed around her shape. A signature.
> "No two shine alike."
They sealed it in silence.
This was their key.
---
Later, when the threads grew still again and the Web darkened briefly, Hector tried shaping his magic again. He floated to where three emotional threads converged—one sharp with regret, one dull with longing, one sweet with laughter swallowed by time.
He reached in—not to steal, but to trace.
He closed his not-eyes.
And suddenly:
A soft gust of air, somewhere in a hallway. A voice half-heard. A loss not fully grieved.
His light pulsed in rhythm.
The gift was becoming more natural.
He was learning to follow emotional footprints.
Vicky practiced too.
She floated into a thread made of aching confusion—then remade herself into a form with sharp edges and no face. She became what someone once feared. Then let it dissolve.
She learned how to become emotion.
Then release it.
Her magic was not about protection. It was about understanding. And surviving what was too heavy to carry alone.
---
Together, they floated in the afterglow of these new discoveries.
Around them, the gods were silent.
But something in the Web began to shift.
Time—if time existed here—moved differently now. Faster.
The currents beneath them stirred. The tangle of threads began to breathe like a lung pulling deeper.
Hector looked down. There was no down, but the feeling was clear.
Change was coming.
Soon, they would fall.
---
But not yet.
For now, they floated in the center of all that was not yet real, not yet flesh, not yet broken.
And they held on to each other—not with hands, but with shape, and sound, and the song no one ever sang to them.
They would forget nearly everything.
But this?
This they would remember.