The first thing I notice when I wake is the silence.
It is not the brittle, exhausted quiet of a battlefield, nor the suffocating, heavy silence of the deep ocean. It is the profound, resonant quiet of a world that has been scrubbed clean. The cosmic static, the deep, subsonic hum of the Devourer’s gravitational pull, the frantic, terrified heartbeat of the Genesis Seed—all of it is gone.
In its place is the earth. Just the earth. Steady, ancient, and entirely at peace.
I open my eyes. The morning sun is streaming through the sheer curtains of our suite, casting long, golden rectangles across the hardwood floor. The light is brilliant, unfiltered by the bruised violet haze that has choked the sky for weeks.
Beside me, Kade is already awake. He is propped up on one elbow, watching me. H
