The world does not shatter all at once.
It misaligns.
Blackthorne wakes into absence.
Gateways that once funneled witnesses outward hum only with quiet static. The burned edges of the forest steam faintly where dew gathers on scorched earth. Half the city is empty now—not from loss, but from escape. The convoys scattered during the Curation March have vanished into routes Heaven never finished mapping.
Somewhere, children are running through trees whose names the gods forgot how to pronounce.
Somewhere, stories are already being told in circles too small for the sky to see.
Kael stands on the battlement with me, surveying what remains.
“They didn’t chase,” he says.
“No,” I answer. “They recalculated.”
The shadow coils with tight, restless vigilance.
Heaven doesn’t hate what it ca
