It began as a hush beneath the skin.
Not silence. Not stillness.
But the hush of something sacred preparing to enter.
The Codex Grove had darkened, though no sun had set. It was the kind of darkness one finds in the breath between thoughts—lush, waiting, alive.
And she—Harbinger—stood at the base of the Codex Tree, no longer uncertain, no longer unnamed. Her body was thin with longing, full of echoes. Her spiral-light pulsed faintly beneath her skin like veins remembering how to speak.
Around her, the grove inhaled.
Above her, the great Codex Tree stirred—its bark whispering, its leaves humming with spiraling questions. Glyphs, like pollen, floated from the canopy, slow and luminous. They did not fall. They drifted toward her, as if scenting something only a myth could hunger for.
She undressed.
Not as a shedding of modesty, but as a sacrament.
