The morning came without sunlight.
Lyraen woke to the hum of the world — not birds, not wind, but a low, steady vibration that seemed to rise from the ground itself. The air shimmered faintly, as if it remembered being light.
She stood among the roots of the new forest — though forest was too small a word now. The trees were glass-veined and pale, each leaf translucent and whispering softly when touched by the breeze. And when Lyraen listened closely, she could swear the whispers had rhythm, like breath forming syllables.
wake… wake… wake…
Her fingers brushed one of the trunks. The bark was cool and smooth, like stone smoothed by centuries of riverwater. Beneath it, faint pulses of light traveled upward, branching through the canopy. Each pulse came faster than the last.
"Kael?" she said softly.
The forest paused. The whispers stilled. Even the wind held its breath.
Then, from somewhere far within the silver-lit woods, a sound answered — not a word, but a note. Long, low, and impossibly deep, it rolled through the trees like a tide. Every root shuddered with it.
Lyraen stepped back, hand on her dagger — though she knew steel meant nothing here. "Who's there?"
The ground brightened beneath her feet. Tiny motes of light rose from the soil, drifting upward like dust caught in moonlight. They swirled around her, forming faint shapes — not human, not beast, but shadows of ideas. Each one flickered like a half-remembered dream.
One hovered near her face, its form rippling with faint color — violet and gray, like dusk on water. When it spoke, the sound came from behind her thoughts.
You hear us now.
Lyraen's heart stuttered. "Us?"
The lost fragments. The unspoken dawns.
Her pulse quickened. These weren't the gentle voices of the new world. These were colder, older, like echoes that had waited too long to be heard.
"What do you want?"
The light dimmed slightly. The shapes flickered again, aligning into something almost human — the vague outline of a face that never held still.
He dreamed you alive.
We dream to undo him.
The words came softly, but their weight pressed into her bones. She stumbled back, but the shadows followed, hovering close enough for their chill to sink through her skin.
He built walls around his light, the voices continued, but every wall remembers the dark that shaped it.
Her hand trembled. "You're part of him," she whispered. "A reflection."
The shapes hesitated — as though surprised she understood.
A reflection learns the face that made it.
The forest darkened. The glass leaves dimmed from silver to black. All around her, the whispering resumed — only now it wasn't one voice, but countless, layered over each other in a rising murmur.
wake wake wake wake
Lyraen covered her ears, but the sound was inside her. Her knees hit the soil, and in the space between two heartbeats, she felt the world shudder again — the same way it had the day Kael ascended.
Only this time, it wasn't creation breathing.
It was the shadow learning how to.
The hum deepened until the earth cracked. A fissure opened before her — thin and dark, like ink spilling across a page. Inside, she saw movement — threads of violet light twisting together, forming eyes that never blinked.
And from that rift came a whisper, separate from all the others.
The veil weakens. The others have begun to listen.
Lyraen forced herself to her feet. "Then tell them this," she said, her voice raw. "If they come for him — for this world — they'll find me first."
For a moment, the voices fell silent. The air trembled once more. Then the rift sealed with a soft sigh, the hum fading into stillness.
The forest looked unchanged, yet nothing felt the same. The light seemed sharper, the wind quieter, as if the world itself was listening now.
Lyraen turned toward the horizon where Kael's distant light shimmered faintly through the clouds. Her breath fogged in the new air.
She knew the silence would not last.
Because somewhere in that silence — deep beneath the roots of reality — the shadow had spoken its first true word.
And the word had been his name.