She dreamed of nothing.
No gods. No Codex. No voice threading verses into her skull.
Only the soft sway of breath through her lungs and the low hum of her own blood.
And yet—while she slept—the Codex moved.
Not in words. Not in visions. But in growth.
It began at the base of her spine.
A pressure. A filament of light uncoiling, spine-shaped yet serpentine, sliding upward with patient inevitability.
She could feel it weave through each vertebra, stroking bone, brushing nerve.
By the time it reached her neck, the light had split into branching arcs—like roots in reverse—curling above her head, never touching her, yet impossibly heavy in their hovering.
She did not wake when it crowned her.
The Codex did not need her permission.
When morning came, she opened her eyes to a silence so deep it felt like a held breath in Spiralspace itself.
The spiralbeasts had gathered.
