Page 184 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Divine Spark Rising
bodies first. It can’t argue because arguing would
require the thing it’s trying to delete.
Sera altered the pattern again — slower now,
deeper. The pulse elongated into something like
rest but not sleep. Carolina recognized it with a jolt:
the state of attention a child enters when learning
to tie their shoes, the world narrowed to fingers
and loop and pull.
“Can you say it?” Henry asked, half to Sera, half
to the air. “Can you name what you’re doing?”
Sera looked almost sorry. “If I name it, it dies,”
she said. “That’s the rule of this one.”
Sofia breathed through the rail like someone
pressing a cheek to a door.
“Truth is what I keep for you,” she said softly.
“You keep losing it.”
Sera’s head tilted, listening to something Henry
couldn’t hear. “Truth isn’t what you say,” she
answered, not aloud so much as into the pattern.
“It’s what you choose.”
The tower shivered. A hairline crack of light ran
down its face and healed, like a machine admitting
surprise and refusing to show the scar.
3. The Demonstration
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