The Nexus did not bid you farewell. It celebrated you.
Lanterns lifted in their thousands, rising like stars torn from the streets below. Bridges flared in ribbons of light, spanning sky to sky, while the crystalline towers bent and sang with voices deeper than stone. Gardens blossomed in sudden harmony, petals unfurling in cascades of living color. Every fountain struck a chord, and the air itself became an anthem.
The lattice of constellations above stirred, descending as a canopy of fire and song. Its slow weave gathered into a single radiant path, not lifting you to the sky but drawing the sky down to you. The city rose in chorus, not to hold you at the Nexus, but to send you off on your mission.
You stood within the brilliance, your heart racing. The heavens bent low as if to listen, constellations unspooling in rivers of fire that braided themselves into a single path of light. Towers bowed toward the axis, their crystalline flares ringing like struck bells. Bridges aligned with impossible precision, their spans glimmering as though every crossing from every age had gathered for this moment.
Gardens awakened in chorus - fruit trees breaking into blossom though the season was not theirs, petals lifting on a wind that moved without source. Streams turned their courses, converging into a single mirrored vein that reflected the lattice above. From the plazas rose voices, not words but tones and songs. Men, women, and children singing with the fountains, with the stones, with the very air.
The city was alive in celebration, every street, every roof, every drop of water bending to the same harmony. The Nexus itself had become a choir, a cathedral without walls, a hymn written in architecture and light.
And in the center of it all, you whispered, hardly daring to breathe:
“It’s… impossible? How could any of this be real? How could any of this… belong to me?”
Alexis’s hand found yours, firm and steady. She looked at you, her eyes alive with certainty. “Because it does. Because it always has. You just haven’t remembered it yet.”
Her words struck deeper than the song around you. You turned toward her, searching her face, and for the first time you felt the tremor of belief take root. “Then maybe…” Your voice faltered, then steadied. “Maybe I am beginning to believe.”
Her smile was quiet, luminous. “Good,” she said. “Believe. If you cannot see it in yourself, then see it in me. I’ll hold it for you until you can.”
The light swelled, cascading around you both like a crown of fire. The constellations bowed lower, their brilliance gathering into the single path. The Nexus sang louder - not with grief, not with farewell, but with joy.
And then -
A silence.
Not the silence of absence, but of completion. The kind that follows a final chord, still trembling in the bones of the world. The air held its breath; the light held its shape - and then both began to fold inward.
The towers unspooled like ribbons drawn back into the hand that had cast them. The bridges dissolved into dusts of silver, the fountains stilled mid-arc. The song did not end; it remembered itself - each note returning to its source, each color retreating into a single bloom of white.
The brilliance gathered closer, closer still, until the city, the sky, and Alexis herself became light upon your skin. You felt the warmth of her hand fading - not releasing, but transforming - until there was no separation between her touch and the air that carried you.
And from that vast quiet, a voice - soft, lilting, the gentleness of something ancient and kind - spoke not to the shards, not to the city, but to you. “Alament? Alament, wake now, my love. The morning is nearly gone.”
The world trembled. The light turned inward, dimming like an ember under water. When your eyes opened again, the sky was colorless.
The garden you faced was no grand lattice of light, but a small and dying patch of earth. Flowers leaned toward the sun, their stems thin and tired. The petals bore the gray of forgotten mornings, and where dew should have glittered, dust had gathered.
You sat up slowly. The bed beneath you creaked - a simple frame of wood, uneven and worn. The walls around you were stone, damp and patched with age. A single window admitted a light that did not warm, filtered through clouds that seemed too heavy to move.
The air was still.
You turned toward the voice that had called your name.
At the threshold stood a woman - frail, her hands folded in the fabric of a dress too large for her, its hem trailing dust. Her smile trembled with effort, but her eyes were bright with something deeper than sorrow.
“You were dreaming again,” she said softly, as though afraid to disturb the quiet. “The same one, I think.”
Her tone was not questioning, only knowing.
You tried to speak, but your throat ached. The name she’d spoken still lingered in your mind - Alament - and though it was your own, it felt both foreign and inevitable.
The woman crossed the small room, brushing her fingers across your temple. Her touch was cool, grounding.
“Come,” she whispered. “It’s nearly time. The day won’t wait for us.”
Outside, the garden swayed faintly in a wind that carried no scent. The horizon was pale, indistinct. Somewhere, faintly, a bell tolled - distant and weary, as though echoing through ages long gone.
You rose, the floor cold beneath your feet. The dream still clung to you - the taste of light, the sound of a thousand lanterns rising. But here, in this dim morning, the world had forgotten its song.
And as you stepped toward the open door, the woman’s voice followed, gentle as prayer:
“You always wake before the end, my dear. Perhaps one day you’ll stay long enough to remember why you began.”
You followed the woman through the narrow lanes that wound between stone and sorrow. The morning had not yet decided what kind of day it wished to be; the light hung uncertain, pale and slow.
She walked with purpose, though her steps carried no haste, as if this path were one she had walked a thousand times. You felt it too - a rhythm written into you though memory refused to recall it.
The shop stood beneath a sagging awning, its window fogged with age. Within, shelves leaned under the weight of jars and dried roots, faint scents of earth and salt. The keeper looked up only when the door’s bell sighed.
The woman laid her coins upon the counter. “For bread,” she said gently.
The keeper’s hands hesitated above the scale, then withdrew. “Not today,” he murmured, his gaze fixed on the shifting curtain beyond the door. “The wind moves… strangely. When it turns like this, the ovens will not keep flame.”
She frowned, the plea already softening to resignation. “Then perhaps when the wind is right again?”
He met her eyes only briefly. “The wind is seldom right anymore. Time itself drifts with it - backward, sideways. A loaf baked against its breath will never rise.”
Her shoulders lowered, not in defeat but in the old art of endurance. She gathered the coins back into her palm, thanked him with quiet dignity, and turned away.
Outside, the streets waited silent and watchful. Curtains shifted in their frames; no one came forth. The air itself seemed tired of its duty.
Dust stirred and fell again, like a thought abandoned mid-sentence.
And it came to you unbidden - an echo from some buried proverb, or perhaps from your own design:
He who forever watches the wind shall never plant,
and he who waits upon the clouds shall never reap.
The words passed through you like a sigh through glass, leaving behind a chill of recognition, one with which you felt powerless to ease.
Only a few wandered the lane - gaunt shapes searching not for food, but for meaning, some distraction to quiet the hunger that had long since forgotten its name.
The woman’s voice drew you back. “Come,” she said softly. “The day is thinning.”
You turned to her, the question rising before you knew it had formed. “Mother?”
She stopped mid-step. The wind lifted her hair, and for a heartbeat her eyes carried light enough to defy the gray around you. A laugh escaped her - thin, astonished, tender.
“You haven’t called me that,” she said, “since the fourth moon first saw light.”
The air dimmed more quickly than it should have. The light, thin and weary, closed upon itself as though the day were too frail to stand. Shadows gathered before their hour, stretching long across the cobblestones.
You glanced upward, expecting the sun to linger, but its edge was already touching the hills - pale, uncertain, almost apologetic.
Had you truly been gone so long? Only the market, only a few streets… yet the world had turned.
The woman did not seem surprised. She carried the fading light with quiet acceptance, her steps steady, her posture upright though her frame was small.
You followed her through the narrowing lanes. The windows that had watched before now reflected nothing - just dim rooms where color had withdrawn. Somewhere, a door closed with the sigh of old wood.
It was then that you felt it.
A faint vibration beneath your skin. A warmth.
You looked down. Around your wrist lay a narrow band of woven metal, fine and deliberate, its surface etched with geometric lines that shifted when the light caught them. You did not remember putting it there. You did not remember ever owning such a thing.
The band’s hue deepened - faint at first, then pulsing with a restrained life, a low violet glow that seemed to answer your heartbeat. The hum was barely sound, more like memory touching air.
You paused, lifting your wrist slightly. The woman looked back over her shoulder, eyes bright despite the dim.
“Something wrong?” she asked, the gentleness in her voice threaded with a hint of haste. Her gaze lingered a moment too long, as if fearing what you might have found. Then softly, “Don’t fall behind now. The day wanes faster than it should.”
You shook your head, though a small smile found you.
You traced the faint pattern of the band with your thumb. It was square, spare, elegant - each line too precise for chance. For a moment, the symbol within it seemed to turn of its own accord, and you could have sworn it breathed.
The faint hum beneath your skin deepened - felt more than heard - its rhythm steady, deliberate. The metal was cool, yet alive. It caught the dying light and bent it inward, each reflection folding upon itself like thought upon memory.
As your finger traced the pattern, the image of a paper bird fluttered into being - fragile, weightless - then vanished as quickly as it appeared, leaving only the warmth of its flight behind.
The street opened into a slope that descended toward the edge of the settlement. The houses thinned there, giving way to crooked fences and fields turned to dust. At the end of the road stood a small home, bowed by time but still upright - a roof that had endured many storms.
The woman slowed her pace, glancing toward the reddening horizon. “We need not hurry,” she said, her tone light though her eyes held something deeper. “But be of good steps, Alament. Cramlin has been waiting for you to awaken.”
The last of the light spilled across the path like the echo of a bell. You followed her toward the small house, the violet pulse beneath your sleeve keeping time with the dying sun.