Chapter 168: The First CryThe white ash kept falling, but it didn't touch her.The moment the baby was placed on my stomach, the raw, bleeding heat in my chest didn't vanish—it focused. She was so small, a fragile slip of warm skin and dark curls resting against my torn tunic, but her weight felt heavier than the three-ton wolf collapsing at my side."Is she breathing?" I choked out. My hands were shaking so violently I could barely cup her tiny head. "Kemi, tell me she’s breathing.""She’s breathing, Zora," Kemi gasped. She was on her knees, her hands wiped hastily on her thighs, leaving smears of silver neural fluid and dark blood across her jeans. Her eyes were wide, fixed on the child's chest. "Look at her. She isn't blue. She isn't gray. She's... gods, look at her skin."Beneath the thin layer of birth-fluid, the baby’s skin wasn't marked by the typical corporate barcodes or registry tattoos that every mid-tier infant received at birth. For a second, a faint, geometric pattern o
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