The silence was the first miracle. Not the dead silence of the Crown’s order, but a living, breathing quiet, broken by the whisper of wind over red rock and the distant, cheerful shouts of children at play. Roewi Verdent stood in the doorway of his simple, stone-and-timber house, watching the twin suns of this nameless frontier world dip toward the jagged horizon. The air smelled of dust and the faint, sweet fragrance of the night-blooming silica flowers.
Five years. It had been five years since the Great Reboot, since the death of godhood, since he had walked away from everything to become nobody.
The settlement, which had tentatively named itself "First Step," was thriving. It was a messy, noisy, beautiful place. Disputes were settled with shouted arguments and eventual, grudging compr
