The first thing Astra realized when she woke was that silence no longer meant safety and the second was that Lumen was gone so she sat uprightso fast the world tilted, breath tearing from her lungs. The chamber around her once humming with the soft resonance of Threadlight felt hollow now, as if something essential had been removed from its bones “Lumen?” Her voice cracked. “Lumen!”No answer, Nyra was already moving, boots scraping stone as she crossed the chamber “He didn’t vanish,”she said quickly, though her eyes were sharp with concern “I would’ve felt it.”Astra swung her legs over the edge of the platform, heart pounding “Then where is he?”Before Nyra could answer, Orion’s voice cut in from the far end of the chamber “He’s responding.”Astra froze “Responding to what?”Orion didn’t look at her because his interface was no longer purely technological but half threaded with Astra’s resonance flickered wildly,with symbolsrearranging themselves faster than logic allowed “To a

The world Astra woke into was not dark; it was muted so that no sound existed, but as if filtered through water. Light reached her eyes reluctantly, pale and diffuse, refusing to settle into clear shapes. Her body felt distant, but negotiated rather than owned even though she breathed, that alone felt like an achievement “Astra?”Nyra’s voice reached her first, threaded with exhaustion and relief. Fingers brushed Astra’s cheek, warm and grounding “She’s breathing,”Nyra said, louder now “She’s actually breathing.”Astra swallowed but her throat burned “Wasn’t planning on stopping,”She rasped with a laugh and broke out half hysterical, half sob and Astra felt arms wrap around her shoulders before she could protest, Nyra pressedher forehead against Astra’s temple, shaking “Don’t ever do that again,”Nyra said “Don’t ever scare me like that.”Astra managed a weak smile “I didn’t die.”“That’s not the bar,” Nyra snapped, then pulled back just enough to look at her. “That’s never the b

The city did not sleep because it listened as lights flickered across glass towers and broken rooftops alike, not from failing power but from tension and an unspokenawareness rippling through streets and veins and hidden systems buried beneath concrete. Somewhere deep below, the discarded realm breathedin slow, uncertain intervals, and above it all, the sky held itself together out of habit rather than trust as Tom Burro stood on the edge of the rooftop, coat snappingin the wind, with one eye closed and the other burning although not painfully but clearly as Snowly sat beside him, massive white frame steady as stone, breath slow,ears angled toward sounds no human could hear. The wolf dog’s fur shimmered faintly, spirit light threading through it like veins beneath translucent ice as Tom exhaled “It’s getting louder,”he said but Snowly did not bark when he answered not with sound, but with presence and a steady pulse against Tom’s awareness “Yes”Tom’s jaw tightened “I know and I

Snowly dreamed which was the first sign something was wrong with him as he had never dreamed before not the way humans did, not in images that driftedwithout command. Snowly remembered, anticipated, sensed. But dreams required distance from the present, a loosening of vigilance but guardians did not loosen up yet here he was, suspended in a slow, echoing place where time behaved like fog and he stood in snow that did not chill him, all around him stretched a forest that no longer existed, tall pale trees bending inward as if listening. The sky above was neither night nor day but a muted silver, threaded with faint lines that shimmered when he moved so Snowly lowered his head but his paws left no prints and that frightened him because a presence stirred behind him,It was vast, familiar, and unbearably gentle “You’re slipping,”the presence said, not in words, but in knowing so Snowly turned but Tom stood there too not as he was now, scarred and tired and burning with refusal but

Darkness did not fall, instead it listened but Astra felt it first not as absence, but as attention sharpening around her like a blade being tested for balance. The threads that had been burning moments before dimmed to embers, not extinguished, just waiting as Tom stood beside her with Snowly’s massiveframe half phased at his flank, Lumen’s light pulsing in a tight, anxious rhythm at his feet while the Arbiter’s geometry had frozen mid collapse, lines hanging in spacelike a breath that could not decide whether to release or choke.Then something else moved not down not up but across as the Watcher staggered back a step,shadow tearing at its own edges “This presence predates adjudication,”it said, voice stripped of its usual certainty “It is not a system function.”Astra swallowed “Then why does it sound like it knows us?”The answer came not as words, but as pressure, a slow tightening of reality’s grip, like fingers testing how much resistance the world would offer before break