Chris falls without motion. No wind. No weight. Just a sense of leaving as if gravity itself has decided he no longer belongs to it. Then ground. Not stone. Not earth.Something softer. He opens his eyes. He stands in a wide, colorless expanse not empty, but unfinished. The sky above is pale and fractured, like light passing through cracked glass.Everywhere he looks, the landscape repeats the same shape, Deborah’s shape. Not her body. Her structure. Pillars rise and fall like rib bones. Paths spiral inward, then stop abruptly. Walls stand half-built, scarred with strain.This place is not a mind. It is a holding pattern.Chris’s breath catches. “Deborah?” he calls.His voice echoes wrong flattened, absorbed. Something moves. Not ahead. Around. Pressure gathers, subtle and invasive. The Before are here, Not fully but probing. Testing the breach he created.Chris stiffens. “No,” he whispers. “You don’t get her.”The landscape responds.A path forms. Not inviting. Necessary. He follows

The valley does not fracture with noise. It fractures with whispers. They start small passed between cooking fires, between glances that linger too long on Chris’s unmoving body, between gratitude and fear that no longer know how to coexist.“He’s still breathing.”“But not waking.”“How long can someone live like that?”“Is he part of it now?”No one says the word thing. But it hangs there anyway.Deborah hears none of it. Not at first. She sits beside Chris, spine straight, eyes hollowed by wakefulness. She has not slept. Has not eaten.She holds his hand like it is a vow she must actively keep. Riven approaches quietly. “You should rest.”She doesn’t look at him. “If I rest,” she says flatly, “I might stop holding myself together.”Riven swallows. “The valley’s uneasy.”That gets her attention. She lifts her head. “Uneasy how?”He hesitates. “People are asking what happens if he never wakes.”Her jaw tightens. “Then I wait.”“And if the wall needs him longer than that?”She turns s

She feels it in the way conversations stop when she passes. In the way arguments pause, then resume more carefully. In the way people glance not at Mia, not at the wall, but at her.She hates it. A council forms without ceremony Six people. Chosen not by wisdom, but by who others already listen to.Sol. Riven, Kael. Two elders Deborah barely knows, and inevitably Fenn. Deborah stands at the edge of the circle, arms crossed. “I didn’t agree to this.”Sol clears his throat. “No one did. That’s usually how councils start.”She glares. “I’m not your leader.”Riven meets her eyes. “You’re the line they won’t cross.”She looks away. “That’s worse.”Fenn speaks smoothly.“Authority is not something you declare, Deborah. It’s something others grant when they fear the alternative.”Her jaw tightens. “And what alternative is that?”He gestures vaguely downward. “Collapse.”Silence settles. Kael breaks it. “The wall reacted last night. Not aggressively but selectively.”“Yes,” Deborah snaps. “

The men do not scream. That is what unsettles everyone most. The stone chamber beneath the east ridge remains sealed no sound escaping, no vibration betraying panic.Just quiet. Too complete. Deborah stands at the ridge at first light, arms wrapped around herself. The stone is smooth where the entrance used to be as if it was never there at all.“They’re alive,” Riven says carefully.“Yes,” Deborah replies. “For now.”He studies her. “You don’t sound reassured.”She exhales. “I don’t know what ‘repentance’ means to a wall.”Inside the chamber, Time behaves strangely. The men feel it almost immediately. Not slower. Thicker. Breath takes effort. Thoughts echo too long. The one who had frozen Alren can move now. Barely. He presses his hands to the stone.“Hello?” he whispers.No answer. The man who fell Doros sits with his back to the wall, knees drawn up, shaking. The third Tavin paces. Angry. “This is wrong,” Tavin snaps. “We were trying to help!”Alren turns slowly. “Were we?”Tavin

Deborah does not sleep. She sits upright beside Chris as dawn bleeds slowly across the valley, her hands folded so tightly her fingers ache. The wall hums. Not deep. Not distant, present. Like breath held just long enough to be noticed.She finally understands what Fenn meant. The wall is no longer a boundary. It is a conversation. And conversations when left unmanaged are easy to hijack.By midmorning, the confessions resume, they come in different shapes now. Refined. “I questioned the purpose.”“I doubted the process.”“I felt resentment.”Each speaker pauses just long enough for Deborah to look at them. For acknowledgment. For absolution. And each time, the wall softens. Relaxes. Learns.Mia watches with her jaw clenched so hard it trembles. “THIS IS WRONG,” she whispers.Deborah knows And still she says nothing. Because every confession is technically true. And that is the trap.Riven corners her near the water line. “You need to stop responding.”Deborah shakes her head. “If I d