POV: LYRA
I didn't sleep for three days.
The carved message in the throne room haunted me. Not just because of what it said, but because of what it represented—a threat from beings that predated everything we knew, everything we'd built our understanding of reality upon.
My workspace became a chaos of ancient texts, fragments of pre-Firstborn writings, and notes scrawled in increasingly desperate handwriting as exhaustion made my thoughts less coherent.
"You need to rest," Seraphine said, appearing in the doorway of the library for the third time that day.
"I need to understand what's coming," I countered, not looking up from the text I was translating. "The Architects aren't a legend we can ignore. They attacked the palace. They left a message. They're real and they're aware of us."
"And you'll be useless if you collapse from exhaustion."
