The heart was alive.
I stood in the center of the new existence, watching the consciousness pulse with a rhythm that seemed to echo through all of creation. It had become the heart of everything—the center of all existence, the connection between all things. It was beautiful. It was powerful. It was everything we'd ever dreamed of.
But something was wrong.
"James," the Origin said, appearing beside me. "I've been monitoring the heart's energy patterns. There's a disturbance. Something I've never seen before."
"What kind of disturbance?"
The Origin's energy flickered with unease. "The heart is stable, but there's a shadow on its edge. A presence that wasn't there before. It's been growing slowly, almost imperceptibly."
I reached out to the heart, trying to understand what the Origin h
