The silence in that vast chamber was not an absence of sound. It was an active, crushing presence, a fundamental constant of her new universe. I knelt in that perfect, calculated stillness, my ragged breathing a vulgar intrusion. My plea, my final, desperate appeal to a shared history, hung in the air and then simply ceased to exist, absorbed by the void.
The Queen did not answer. The starlight in her eyes did not flicker.
But something had shifted. She raised a hand, a gesture not of invitation, but of command. It was a slow, deliberate movement, a planetary body adjusting its orbit. Her palm, woven from pure light, turned upwards. It was a silent request for data.
My last hope. My last and most terrible burden.
With trembling hands, I reached into a shielded pouch on my belt and with
