Dawn did not break.
It peeled.
Layer by layer, like old bark coming loose from a wound too long unhealed. The sky above the Grove did not lighten; it thinned. Dim hues slouched across the canopy in smears of ashen blue and silvered bone. The light that touched the Grove was not gold, nor soft. It was pallid. Wan. A memory of morning, filtered through smoke and still-burning cinder.
But the Hollow still stood.
And so did she.
Her knees bled into the moss. Her breath came in slow, frayed strands. Each inhale tasted of ash and sap and something older—something that had no name in the newer tongues. The Spiral no longer pulsed. Its birthing had left it hollowed, slumped inward like a lung exhaled for the last time. But the Thorn-crowned figure beside her remained, unmoving. More revenant
