The silence was killing Benny, it was louder than anything he'd ever heard.
He and his aunt Bianca were standing on a balcony in the Low Nutrient Zone, looking at the city that had stopped screaming. The algae light above was constant, quieter now, without the crazy pulse that used to follow every heartbeat. The Heartforge's far-off thrum was a deep, slow beat, like a lullaby instead of a war cry.
The riots stopped. Not because the Karu was flowing again—the roots were still cut—but because the Withdrawal had... changed. The gnawing hunger was still there, but it wasn't as desperate or mind-bending. The Echo was quiet, not gone, but faded, changed from a scream to a sigh, a memory.
People were standing in the streets, confused and scared, but not violent. They were waiting to see what would happen.
It worked, Bianca said, her voice tired and amazed. She was holding the silence-stone Benny gave her, its surface cool in her hand. The switch... it reset the beat.
Benny agreed. He didn't really need the stone. The silence in his mind was his own. For the first time, his thoughts were really his. But... what do we eat now?
That was the question everyone was thinking. The Karu was gone. The old ways were broken.
After that, there was a noise coming from the street. Some people were coming, not a mob, but a procession. Naomi Frost was in the center. Her nice dress was ripped and dirty, but she walked with confidence. Together with her some former junior Carvers and some lower-level officials, she was giving out something other than Karu: rough, dark cakes made of ground fungus and processed mycelial fibers, symbiote food.
It's not Karu, Naomi said; her clear voice reached the worried crowd. It won't stop the Withdrawal completely, but it will keep you alive. It's what people in the Wastes have been eating for a long time. They gave it to us, and they'll teach us how to grow it.
People were insulting the group, calling them Blight-food! and Heresy!.
Naomi didn't even blink. She took a bite from one of the cakes, chewed, and swallowed. It tastes like dirt, she said. And patience. It's not a dream. It's real, and it's all we have until we learn to dream for ourselves again.
Benny looked at his aunt's face. She was crying. Naomi, the expert on despair, was now a prophet of plain, ugly food.
On another street, a different group came. Leo Vance was leading them some symbiotes walked into Sanctum. They were not carrying any weapons but only sacks full of spores and gardening tools. They were looking at the pale, starving city-dwellers not with hate, but with the sad pity of doctors seeing a bad, self-inflicted sickness.
The Host is resting, Leo said; his voice was rough but loud. The fever's broken, but the body's weak. It can't feed you like it did. You have to learn to feed yourselves, and to feed it. The mycelium can be a bridge; it can help break down what's dead and make soil for what can live.
The two groups, the fallen Palate people, and the symbiotes, met in the street. They didn't fight but had a careful, tired exchange: a sack of spores for a promise to let them pass safely, a recipe for a desperate kind of bread.
It was not peace, just a truce born of shared starvation.
In the Citadel of the Palate, a temporary council was forming, not of high priests, but of engineers, herbalists, former Heretics, and symbiote helpers. Lucien Gray was there, his scholarly anger replaced by a dazed purpose. He was showing the Lobe's last gift—the map of healthy divine pathways—for everyone to see. The god's original food chain was a closed loop, he said, his voice rough. A cycle of energy, not a pantry. We need to study this, not to take from it, but to… copy it, to build our own, smaller cycles.
Maxine Sharpe was not part of the council. She was in the infirmary, looking after Joan Rhodes, who was still. The Captain was alive, but just barely. The violent Aether hadn't killed her; it had broken down parts of her at a cellular level. She was in a kind of suspended animation, her body was fighting between falling apart and a strong will to live that even Maxine was surprised by.
Benny was coming every day. He held his mother's cold hand and talked to her about the quiet. She never replied, but her heartbeat got a little more stable when he was there.
A week after the slow beat had started, Maxine left the infirmary. She went through the quiet, hurting city to the Cerebral Vault's entrance. The Wardens were calm now, singing a low song around the seed she had planted. She didn't enter; she just listened.
The world was new beat was not a happy one. It was hurting, tired, and scary, but it was a beat. It wasn't the last gasp of a dying dream; it was the first shaky breath of something waking up.
They had almost eaten their god to death, but then they decided to spit out the last bite.
The dish was empty. But around it, the diners—starving, changed, and awake—were looking at each other, at the ruined table, and wondering what to build next.
The feast was over. The fast had begun.