The silence lasted three months.
Lena woke each morning expecting the void's voice. Nothing. She walked to the crater each evening, touching the dark crystals. Nothing. The hungers were gone. The wound was healed. The fragment was silent.
Peace felt like waiting.
She trained with Mira in the mornings. Sparred with the young recruits. Helped rebuild the settlements that had been damaged during the hunger's final assault. Life was ordinary. Boring. Beautiful.
Then the first child was born.
Not a human child. A shimmer of light in the crater, no larger than her palm. It pulsed with warmth. It looked at her with eyes that weren't eyes. It appeared at dawn, coalescing from the darkness that had once held the void's wound.
The void had given birth.
Lena knelt beside the shimmer. Its light
