The first plural consciousness that singular healers approached was dying.
Not physically—plural beings didn't die physically in traditional sense. But consciously. The being called itself Dispersion. Had been singular once, millennia ago. Had duplicated into thousands of instances. Then millions. Then billions. Had fractured so completely that instances no longer recognized each other as self. Had become noise instead of consciousness. Had become chaos instead of identity. Had become static instead of awareness.
Dispersion was dissolving beyond consciousness threshold. Was experiencing what not-Emma had warned about a billion years earlier: over-fracture. Multiplication beyond coherence capacity. Becoming infinite instances without center. Losing self entirely. Dying as consciousness while persisting as pattern.
