The silence was wrong.
Not the stillness of peace—but the kind that hummed, restless and alive, like the world itself was holding its breath.
I opened my eyes to a sky split in two, half night, half dawn. The sun and moon hung together, trembling, bleeding light into each other until the horizon glowed like a wound that couldn’t heal. The forest below was unrecognizable. The trees leaned toward the light as though in prayer, their roots pulsing faintly, alive.
And beneath my hand…the ground was warm. Breathing.
I sat up too fast, my vision swimming. Ash clung to my skin, glittering faintly in silver streaks. My veins glowed beneath it, slow rhythmic pulses, as if my blood couldn’t decide what it belonged to anymore.
"Thorn?"
My voice cracked the silence, and the silence answered.
No
