Adrian's fingers touched the water, and the cavern dissolved into a flood of images.He saw the first mind, alone in the dark, reaching out, touching nothing. He saw that reaching become a hunger, and the hunger become a shadow, and the shadow become the System. He saw the Council find the sleeper and mistake its loneliness for a weapon. He saw ten thousand years of reaching, and taking, and never once being answered.Then he saw something else. The woman who had remembered her name. The child learning to walk again. The plaza in Aetherion, filling with people who chose to build instead of obey. The hunger had consumed millions, but it had also been the only thing holding the world together while it did.The images faded. Adrian stood in the cavern again, water dripping from his fingertips, the face in the pool watching him with something that looked almost like hope."You understand now," it said."I understand," Adrian said. "But understanding isn't the same as trusting. You consu