Page 206 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Divine Spark Rising
Carolina flinched at the honesty’s temperature.
Henry held the mug tighter.
Sera stepped to the first step and did nothing —
the kind of nothing that means: I am here, and I am
not yours.
“We were all so tired,” Sofia said, softer. “The
world wanted truth. Then it wanted relief from
truth. I thought I could give both.”
“And Serpa?” Henry asked. The name cracked
his mouth dry.
Silence pooled. Then the mirror breathed an
image out — not polished video but memory
spilled and steadied: a younger Sofia in this very
room, hair unpinned, bare face, hands that
trembled only when she let herself. Beside her,
Serpa — alive, thinner, eyes too bright. A third
figure hovered at the edge: Álvaro, not yet Aleph,
mouth full of unfinished sentences.
Sofia on the recording spoke to the men with a
teacher’s gentleness and a thief’s certainty.
“We can’t sell this as a product,” she said. “We
have to birth it as a ritual.”
Serpa laughed, tired and kind. “Poetry then.”
“Architecture,” Sofía corrected. “We curate
dissonance at the source.”
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