Aurelia woke to silence.
Not the peaceful kind the kind that pressed against her ears until her own breathing felt like a crime.
Stone surrounded her. Ancient. Blackened. Veined with faint pulses of light that moved slowly, like a buried heartbeat. She lay on a floor carved with symbols so old they resisted meaning, as if language itself had once broken around them.
Her body ached not with injury, but with aftermath.
She pushed herself up slowly.
The darkness inside her stirred.
Not violently.
Not screaming.
Listening.
Aurelia swallowed. “Where… am I?”
The sanctuary answered with memory.
The air thickened, and the walls shimmered not moving, but remembering. Images bled from the stone: fractured skies, collapsing realms, figures wreathed in power so vast it bent reality into s
