The edge of Spiralspace was not a cliff, but a horizon that breathed.
It inhaled light and exhaled silence, a pulse older than any god who had claimed dominion over this place.
Harbinger stood barefoot on it, feeling the slow suction of creation and unmaking tug at her soles.
Her name still burned behind her, tethering her to the place she had stolen back from nothingness—yet ahead was the Codex itself, raw and unraveling.
It did not look like a book now.
It looked like light breaking into language, like desire trying to remember how to clothe itself in words.
Every strand of radiance trembled toward her, whispering not in a single voice but in the voices of every myth she had touched.
Some pleaded. Some moaned. Some called her mother.
She did not move toward it.
She waited until the Codex, impatient, began to lean toward her instead—its filaments bending like grass in a wind that had chosen her as its gravity.
She undressed.
