Page 126 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Divine Spark Rising
Aleph looked at the circular ribbon of water that
reflected a sky not theirs. He pressed his palm to
the glass. The reflection stuttered. His fingers made
a quiet shape: Door.
Then he did something startlingly human. He
held Henry’s gaze for three whole seconds, and
guilt and love and a hundred unworded things
moved there like fish briefly visible in deep water.
He turned and beckoned.
4. The Mirror Walk
They followed Aleph along the glass ring. The
water inside remained perfectly still, but the
reflection it held changed with their steps. Henry
saw versions of himself flicker by: man in a suit,
man in a cassock, man with no hair and too much
anger, man who had never gone to Lisbon at all.
For each version a different Carolina walked beside
him, and Sera sometimes did and sometimes did
not exist.
The Mirror wasn’t showing possibilities. It was
sampling obedience.
“Don’t look,” Carolina warned softly. Which
meant: look once, then choose not to again.
At the chamber’s center stood a pillar of layered
crystal — not mineral, not glass; data made visible.
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