POV: Lila (primary), Kehra (pattern sensing), Maximus (devotion rewired), Elora (tracekeeper) Lila The Gate hadn’t spoken in twenty-one days. To me, no. To Elora not. Not even to the trees, which used to sway when it moved. However, this morning, the eastern roots' surrounding soil breathed. Subtle. Shallow. But enough to move the sliver of chalk I had drawn around the final spiral curve at dawn. I didn’t react. Because breath doesn’t always signal voice. Sometimes, it announces decision. Before I called, Kehra came over to me. Now she moves more slowly. Not tired. Not in doubt. She moved like someone who had realized forward was optional. And instead, had chosen integration. > “It wants a vessel,” she said softly. > “Not a keeper?” > “No,” she said. "It has finished being carried." > "Now what?" Kehra blinked. > "It wishes to become a narrative." Maximus (rewired devotion) She no longer looks back. Not at me. Not at the church. Not even at the Gate. Not because she’
POV: Lila (primary), Kehra (interior unraveling), Maximus (observation), Elora (remembrance) Lila The Gate hadn’t spoken in twenty-one days. Not to me. Not to Elora. Not even to the trees, which used to sway when it moved. But this morning, the soil around the eastern roots breathed. Subtle. Shallow. But enough to displace the thin ring of chalk I had drawn at dawn around the final spiral curve. I didn’t react. Because breath doesn’t always signal voice. Sometimes, it announces decision. Kehra came to me before I called. Now she moves more slowly. Not tired. Not uncertain. She moved as if she had realized that moving forward was optional. And had chosen integration instead. > “It wants a vessel,” she said softly. > "Not a good fit?" > “No,” she said. “It’s done being carried.” > “Then what?” Kehra blinked. > "It wishes to become a narrative." Maximus (observation) When the silence gets thicker, she tilts her head in a certain way now. Not in fear. not to translat
POV: Lila (primary), Kehra (interior echo), Maximus (reflection) Lila The brand-new map didn't just appear. It folded. Across time. Across breath. Not on paper, or bark, or stone but across my senses. When my fingers touched the iron, I'd feel it. When the wind skipped once before shifting directions. When a word I hadn’t said rippled the mirror pool before I even reached it. > Elora stated, "It's rewriting orientation." > “Whose?” I asked. She paused. > “Yours.” The fifth spiral had stopped deepening. Instead, roots had begun to tilt. Not grow. Not bloom. Tilt. That shouldn't have any significance. However, anyone who had been following the Gate for a sufficient amount of time understood that force was not required for change. Sometimes, a lean was a summons. Kehra no longer walked in straight lines. Because the light moved differently—less glimmer and more pulse—I was only aware that she was near. And Maximus, now, wasn’t trying to hold me close. He’d begun circ
POV: Lila (primary), Maximus (reflection), Kehra (as tether) Lila The Gate hadn’t pulsed in three days. That's what Elora said out loud while holding the parchment half-folded and her hands covered in dustroot ink. However, she did not say it out of dread. She said it like someone marking the edge of a field that had stopped blooming and didn’t need coaxing only patience. I didn't respond in any way. primarily due to the fact that the Gate remained open. It had not returned. I've also discovered that stillness is frequently the sound of something awakening without an audience. That night, I slept once more underneath the sky vault. No walls. No sigil between me and the moon. Maximus left two flasks and a half-loaf of rosebread near my satchel before vanishing into the Temple’s eastern corridor. He never said where he’d gone. I never asked. That’s how you keep a thing tender by not making it prove itself twice. Kehra hadn’t drawn since the marrow sigil. She had instead been
POV: Lila (primary), Maximus (interludes), Kehra (whispers) Lila That morning, the birds did not sing. They hovered, shifted on branches, opened beaks but sound never came. The air wasn’t empty. It was listening. We now comprehend what that meant. The Gate had turned again. Neither opened nor pulsed Just… angled. The way a person's face slants toward a whisper they know is meant for them. Kehra was already awake when I reached the mirror courtyard. She stood with her back to the cracked glass, chalk-stained fingers folded behind her, spine straight, eyes focused on the eastern moss wall. She no longer traced spirals. She was drawing veins. Jagged, branching lines that pulsed faintly in low light, converging toward an unseen center. They weren’t symmetrical. Not guided by ritual. They spread like untrained, alive nervous systems. “I stopped seeing loops,” she said when I came near. “Now I just feel pull.” Maximus (interlude) She hasn’t slept beside me in four days. Sh
POV: Lila (primary), Kehra (interlude), Maximus (reflection)LilaThe roots beneath the Gate trembled the morning the garden fog did not lift.It wasn’t fear. Not hunger. Something else.Hesitation.There was no wind, no sound in the temple bell, no spiral humming beneath the steps. But the moss along the old Tribunal walls curled away from the stone as if the foundation exhaled and the ground held its breath.Kehra didn’t speak when she entered the hall.She wore no shoes.Chalk smudged her knuckles.And across her wrists, faint glyphs glowed not bright, not loud, not finished. Like script that hadn’t yet asked to be read.She crossed the courtyard to the Gate without urgency.When I found her, she was already kneeling.Both palms flat. Spine aligned.Eyes not closed.Open.Watching.I joined her.Didn’t ask.Didn’t speak.We sat like that for what might’ve been an hour, or a minute, or a pause stitched between history and invitation.Kehra broke the stillness first.> “I saw a fifth