The stars began to blink. One by one, they went dark, not extinguished, but turning inward, folding into themselves like eyes closing in sleep.Azura felt it before she saw it: that deep, crawling pressure in the air, the slow, deliberate draw of something too vast to name. It was like the universe inhaling after holding its breath for eons.The Silence had awakened. She stood in the center of a meadow that shimmered with dew made of starlight. The Dawn Child slept beside her, curled in the grass, glowing faintly.Each rise and fall of the girl’s chest pulsed through the world; her breathing was the rhythm of creation itself. But tonight, that rhythm had faltered.Kael’s voice was gone, no whisper, no warmth beneath her ribs. Only the echo of his last word: remember.Azura knelt and brushed the child’s hair back from her face. The light beneath her skin flickered like a candle in wind. “Come on, little one,” she whispered. “Stay with me.”The sky pulsed in response, black veins crawli

The scream didn’t sound human. It didn’t sound divine. It sounded like a world tearing its own heart in half.Azura lunged forward, catching the Dawn Child as her small body convulsed with light. The girl’s glow flared violently, gold, white, then a deep, unnatural black that swallowed the air around them.“Stay with me!” Azura’s voice broke as she held the trembling child. “Fight it, don’t let it in!”The child’s eyes snapped open, pupils blown wide, reflecting the silhouette of the Silence standing above them. “I, I didn’t want to hear it,” she choked. “But it’s inside me. It’s everywhere. It’s… me.”The meadow buckled. Grass twisted into spirals that unraveled into dust. The sky split into mirrored fragments, showing versions of reality collapsing in slow, elegant destruction.Kael’s voice flared inside Azura’s chest, strained, faint, desperate. Azura, she’s being overwritten! Pull her back!Azura pressed her forehead against the girl’s, gripping her shaking hands. “Listen to me. I

The heartbeat spread. Not as sound, as permission. Azura felt it ripple through her bones as the newborn pulse rolled outward from the cracked void.The stars flared brighter, stabilizing into slower orbits, as if the universe itself had been given a reason to hesitate.The incomplete being shuddered inside the fracture, its vast, broken outline trembling around that fragile rhythm. The Dawn Child clutched Azura’s sleeve. “It’s scared.”Azura swallowed. “So am I.”The Silence recoiled another step, its once-perfect contour rippling like disturbed water. This development is improper. “You’ve said that about everything that ever mattered,” Azura shot back.The incomplete voice trembled again, clearer now, still broken, but learning. …I feel… weight… and flow…The Dawn Child took a hesitant step forward. “That’s time. You’re feeling time.”Time… means… continuation? “Yes,” the child said softly. “If you want it to.”The Silence’s tone sharpened with rare urgency. Do not teach it progress