The universe screamed.
Not with sound—for sound required matter to vibrate through—but with the fundamental discord of absolute certainty tearing itself apart. The Dark, that primordial force which had devoured galaxies with the serene confidence of gravity pulling stone, was experiencing its first civil war.
Reed felt it through the Memory Palace, a psychic earthquake that made his bones ache with sympathetic resonance. Reality itself was fracturing as The Dark—unified for eons beyond counting—began to split along philosophical lines.
"What have we done?" he whispered, blood streaming from his eyes as mortal perception tried to process cosmic schism. Through their connection, he could feel Lyralei's consciousness flickering like a candle in a hurricane, her existence stretched across the growing divide in The Dark's nature.
We've made it think, came her reply, tinged with wonder and terror in equal measure. And now it can't stop.
