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Dawn came like a slow breath drawn through cupped hands. The ridge traded its last blue for the first gold, and the air on the rooftop turned from crisp to kind. Kai had not moved far in the night — only enough to change which knee went numb, only enough to keep the spear from digging into his side. He did not need to look to know Miryam's chrysalis had changed. He felt it the way a beekeeper feels a hive's new calm.
The gold shell that had pulsed steadily through the dark had gone, at last, to a warm, unshifting hue. The faint hum under his palm became a contented thrum, slow as a river in summer. On either side of the altar, the two nine-star cores had lost their stubborn, last buried glow; they were the color of old bone in dust, their surfaces hairline-crazed where night's cold had tapped them.
