Page 106 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Divine Spark Rising
in a thousand angles. They spoke gently in reverse,
and the air, obedient, softened Zhara’s bones.
Sera lifted her chin and hummed a single note.
Not loud. Not weapon. A remembering. The
nearest pane fogged and then cleared with sudden
sweat. The Redactors’ backward phrases snagged
like thread on an old nail.
Henry rolled a crate into another, which seemed
ridiculous until the hollow thunder set off a tremor
that knocked a clipboard from a console. Zhara
kicked it, and it skittered under the pillar where no
one could politely retrieve it.
Forty-two seconds is a geography. In the first
ten, your body decides it will survive. In the second
ten, your brain realizes your body might be wrong.
In the last twenty-two, you write the chapter you
wanted to live.
Carolina’s progress bar reached sixty percent.
Seventy. Ninety.
A Redactor touched a panel and the entire
floor’s reflections aligned one degree truer. Henry
felt the correction as a knife drawn along the nerve
that connects belief to breath. His knees gave.
Sera’s note wavered; Zhara’s mouth thinned to a
line.
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