Page 104 - DivineSparkRisingFinal

Divine Spark Rising
rippled through the room, briefly syncing half the
clocks before they fractured again.
“Time isn’t real,” Bento said. “Pattern is real.
The God Word is gears meshing. Fragments are
cogs. Put them together, you don’t just measure
change, you direct it.”
He motioned to the walls. “Fragment Eight isn’t
something you read. It’s something you feel. Sit
long enough, and you’ll notice.”
Henry did. Minutes stretched, folded, slipped.
Some clocks sprinted, some dragged. His heartbeat
stumbled, then chased, then quit trying altogether.
Temporal drift.
Chega de finger.
The phrase circled tighter and tighter until the
lock inside him began to give. Memories arrived
out of order: rain on stone, Cairo heat, Carolina’s
voice, his mother’s hand. Not real memories—
edits. Substitutions. Yet in the fracture there was
freedom.
Because if time could bend, so could the story
he’d been told about himself.
Subject Eleven flashed in his mind, wandering,
nameless, unmoored. Henry pressed his palms to
his knees and forced himself upright before the
loop stripped too much.
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