The five moons had shifted in their slow dance across the sky when Alistair spoke again. The grief for Isabella was a fresh, quiet wound between them, but it had forged a new determination in Lucy's eyes. The time for tears was over. Now, it was time to understand.
"Again," Alistair said, his voice calm. "But this time, don't just invite the light. Listen for its opposite, too."
Lucy stood, her feet planted firmly in the pale dust. She closed her eyes, reaching out with that new, fragile sense. She found the warm, gentle stream of light from the white moon easily now. But beneath it, she felt something else—a cool, deep stillness from the shadowed side of a rock, an absence of energy that was just as real.
"Energy isn't just light and heat," Alistair explained, walking a slow circle around her. "It's vibration. It's magnetism. It's the pull of gravity and the silence between stars. To persuade it, you must know all its faces."
