The first breath comes with warmth instead of chill. The Sovereign’s Chamber hums softly around me, the same rhythm, the same low vibration, only calmer. The faint glow from the crown’s resting stand paints gold lines across the black glass of the ceiling. The Dominion breathes beneath me.
I sit up slowly. The bed adjusts to the motion like liquid solidifying. My armor’s gone, replaced by the lighter ceremonial weave I’d worn before sleep. The room smells faintly of resin and metal. I take a moment to listen.
The hive answers back.
The hum flows steady, disciplined. A hundred thousand notes in perfect synchrony. I can feel the pattern now, their song under my skin, every corridor, every worker, every spark of thought. The repairs continue, the new fortress rising above the shaft, the outer galleries hardening with resin.
But something else lingers in the background, gaps. Two thin silences in the hum’s harmony. I know what they are before I even check the map.
Two scout groups. Missing.
I rise, the motion easy now, the body obedient. The connection to the throne is weaker here, but the awareness never fully fades. A gesture brings the sound-map to life, lines of gold humming through air, the Dominion rendered as a lattice of tone and pulse. I trace the two missing strands northward. They fade beyond the ridge where the dunes twist like broken glass.
Hostile territory.
The last pulses from those groups came hours ago. Static notes, distorted. Then silence.
Cast will have already noticed. She will expect orders.
I stand at the mirror, studying the pale eyes reflected back at me. No circles under my eyes just the Pale Crown above my head, floating staticly. I’ve learned something important since the last waking: I always return exactly where I left..
I wonder if that’s universal. If every king wakes where they last sat, or if the throne itself is the anchor.
The thought sticks.
If I log out here and will myself to return to the throne… what happens? Can intention rewrite location? Is that the trick to moving faster in Nod, not through the land, but through meaning?
A test for next time.
For now, the scouts.
I move to the door, the Dominion Chime leaning against the frame where I left it. The bells whisper as I lift it, each motion answering with a soft, resonant sigh. The weapon feels less foreign now, more extension than tool.
Tonight I’ll sleep longer. I’ve cleared the weekend, taken the pills early. No alarms. No work. Just time, as much as I need. The body obeys different rules here, but I’ve learned how to wake myself if I have to. Nod respects willpower.
This time, I intend to see how deep that will goes.
I close my eyes. The hum greets me, patient and endless, waiting for the next command.
The throne room waits in stillness, the air heavy but alert. When the doors open, the hum contracts, then steadies again. Cast kneels at the base of the dais, head bowed low, her armor glinting beneath the resin light.
“My king,” she says. “All construction orders are complete. The fortress now stands at full height. Drones await your next directive.”
I nod, listening past her words. Beneath the steady harmony of the hive runs something thinner, two empty places in the pattern, sharp as missing teeth.
“The missing scouts, any changes?”
Her tone darkens. “None. Their last hum came from beyond the northern ridge. The drones name that region the Obsidian Reach. Sound bends there and doesn’t always come back.”
The resonance map flickers above the throne, lines of gold pulsing across the air. Two of them stutter, then die into nothing.
I trace the gap. “Prepare a road north from the fortress to the ridge,” I order. “Wide enough for caravans, sealed with resin and packed glass. A paved line, clean, direct, and defensible. Every mile hardened will mean faster movement later.”
Cast bows her head. “We’ll begin immediately. The drones already stockpile materials. The fortress crew will extend the roadwork once their wall cooling completes.”
“Good,” I say. “Make sure they work in shifts. Night air hardens resin twice as fast.”
Her wings shift faintly with concern. “Shall I send a retrieval party for the missing?”
“No. I’ll go myself,” I answer. “Ready Rhel, Seris, Thane, and Ira. This is reconnaissance, not recovery. I need to know what silences our hum.”
Cast hesitates, then draws a vial from her belt. The liquid inside glows faintly gold, pulsing to the same rhythm as the Dominion. “Resonance sap,” she explains. “Distilled from the heartstone. Drink it, and the link will hold, even beyond range.”
I take it from her gloved hand. The glass vibrates softly against my palm. “Will it harm me?”
“It has no will,” she says. “Only connection.”
The sap burns faintly as it goes down, sweet, metallic. Sound unfolds. I can sense every drone’s movement across the hive: the steady pulse of work in the fortress above, the resin cooling along the new walls, the slow rhythm of the drones already laying the first stones of the northern road.
Cast watches me with quiet awe. “You hear them now, my king?”
“Yes,” I say. “Every note.”
The captains arrive soon after, their armor tuned in low harmony. Rhel, broad and patient. Seris, silver-edged and sharp. Thane, scarred but tireless. Ira, bright-eyed, her resonance quick and restless. They kneel as one.
“Arm and march,” I command. “North, to the Reach. We’ll learn what claimed our own.”
They rise in unison. “By your tone, my king.”
We ascend the spiral shaft. The hum dims as we climb, replaced by the whisper of sand. At the surface, twilight stretches across the dunes, violet fading to rust. Behind us, the fortress stands complete, black glass walls gleaming under the last light, banners stirring with their own soft frequency. Drones move along the scaffolds, sealing the battlements while others pour resin into a newly carved trench, the beginning of the north road.
A faint shimmer runs through the ring on my hand.
[VioletVex]: The walls are done already? He’s crazy efficient.
[Archivolt]: Road construction confirmed. CH100 is expanding.
The voices fade, leaving the desert quiet again. I shift the Dominion Chime onto my shoulder. Its bells murmur once, as though tasting the air ahead.
“Forward,” I say.
The captains fall in behind me. The first stretch of the new road gleams beneath starlight, smooth and black as cooled obsidian. Beyond its edge, the dunes wait, vast, silent, and watching.
We march toward the horizon where the hum ends and the unknown begins.
The surface wind carries grit and silence. The Dominion’s hum recedes behind me, a pulse dimming with distance but never gone. The road north glows faintly where the resin is still warm, fading into untouched sand. Four shadows trail close behind, my captains moving in perfect intervals, their steps syncing to my rhythm without a word.
We cross the last stretch of built road and into the open desert. The air grows heavier. The world loses texture until it feels carved from glass.
Ahead, the Obsidian Ridge rises, not a hill, but a wound in the world. Spires of black crystal spear upward in chaotic patterns, their surfaces sharp enough to throw prismatic light across the dunes. It looks less like geology and more like something that grew toward the sun and then froze mid-reaching.
Thane raises a hand. “The ridge, my king. Readings match the last signal before silence.”
I nod once. “Mark our return path.”
Rhel drives a black rod into the sand. It hums faintly, connecting back through the resonance net.
The Ring of the Outer Court stirs on my finger. Thoughts flicker through it, distant, curious voices.
[VioletVex]: Look at that terrain shift, those spires are gorgeous.
[Archivolt]: That’s geological glass, not resin. He’s walking into an old impact zone.
[carapace_kid]: DUNGEON ALERT!!
Their excitement echoes faintly in the back of my mind. I let them chatter; it feels good to be seen, to have witnesses.
We approach the ridge. The air temperature drops. Dust turns to shards underfoot. Each step clicks softly, like walking across a shattered mirror. The fissure ahead yawns wide, a vertical mouth carved between two slabs of crystal. Within, darkness breathes cool and still.
“Move forward, spread out,” I command.
The captains fan out, glowstones igniting faint blue along their pauldrons. The light spills into the fissure, revealing a descending ramp cut from fused glass. The walls catch every movement, scattering color until it feels like walking through frozen lightning.
We descend in silence. The farther down, the more the world folds inward. Even the sound of our breathing seems absorbed.
Seris murmurs through our private channel. “Residual magic in the air. Stale, old. Not ours.”
“Keep alert,” I say.
After several turns, the ramp opens into a vast antechamber. Stone and crystal intermingle, architecture buried under eruption. Broken pillars lie half-swallowed by glass. The ground dips toward a sunken hall lined with doorways choked by debris.
Thane kneels beside a shattered tablet. “These etchings... predates our pattern language. Could be proto-resonance glyphs.”
The Ring hums, translating fragments of spectator thought.
[Hymnline]: Everything looks so old, this dungeons massive.
I scan the hall. “Clear the side rooms. Report any movement, do not engage return to the group first. We dont know what to expect in here.”
We split into two pairs. The halls beyond are fractured veins of glass and ruin. Most rooms hold only dust, empty alcoves where shelves once stood, littered with stone tablets fused into slag.
Then Ira calls through the link. “Movement, northeast wing. Multiple entities."
We converge.
The passage narrows into a corridor of tilted pillars, their tops fused together by melted crystal. Something scrapes behind the wall, a low, rhythmic rasp. The glowstone light catches shapes darting
between gaps: pale, angular bodies, limbs too long, eyes reflecting silver.
Not Sileth.
Rhel steps forward, shield raised. “Orders?”
“Test their intent,” I say.
The nearest creature lunges, skittering along the wall like a spider. Its skin is translucent, almost liquid, refracting the glowstone light into sharp bands. Rhel meets it with his shield, the impact ringing dull against the silence. Another leaps for Thane; Seris intercepts mid-air, her blade cutting clean through. The body hits the floor and shatters into flakes of glass and fluid.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I swing the Dominion Chime once. The bells ring in compressed air, sound that folds back on itself. The pulse hits the corridor and every surface vibrates at once, hurling three more creatures into the walls. They burst like bladders of mercury.
No screams. Only the crack of breaking glass.
The Ring flickers again.
[VioletVex]: WOW that swing.
[carapace_kid]: The audio compression is INSANE.
[Archivolt]: Hmm silence persists. Its almost like he is fighting underwater.
The floor tilts downward into deeper chambers. The remains of ancient shelving line the descent, fossilized books, melted plaques, burned fragments that still hum faintly when brushed.
We advance in measured steps. The deeper we go, the colder it becomes. The ceiling lowers, forcing us to crouch through a collapsed arch. Beyond it, the space opens again, a central rotunda littered with crystal shards and collapsed beams. In the far corner, half-hidden under debris, something flickers blue.
A drone.
One of ours, its carapace cracked, one arm missing. Its remaining limbs twitch weakly, emitting faint resonance clicks that echo off the stone.
I kneel beside it. The drone’s single eye flares, recognizing my tone. It tries to kneel but collapses, shuddering.
“It lives,” Ira whispers.
Rhel scans the shadows. “Was it attacked by the same monsters?”
The answer comes from deeper in the ruin, a low grinding noise, like crystal shearing against bone.
Seris steps back. “My King, more entities!”
Shapes detach from the far wall, larger than the earlier swarm. Three, maybe four. Each built like a mantis sculpted from fused glass and flesh. Their claws hum faintly, edges vibrating with captured resonance.
Thane braces his weapon. “They’ve been feeding on crystal.”
The fight is brutal. The silence turns every motion into weight; every blow feels half-muted. The Chime’s ring warps, the sound bending and coming back from the walls a heartbeat late. One creature’s claw catches my pauldron, a clean slice that leaves ragged edges. Rhel drives his shield into its thorax, shattering it; Seris finishes with a thrust. Ira flanks the next, her twin daggers punching through its jaw.
When the last one falls, the silence hangs heavier than before. The crystals along the walls vibrate faintly, glowing from within as if responding to the violence.
Thane wipes his blade. “It’s quiet again.”
I glance toward the drone. It extends its remaining arm, pointing weakly toward a sealed door at the chamber’s rear.
“Something in there,” Ira says.
We pry the door open. Behind it lies a chamber intact compared to the others, shelves of crystals stacked in spirals, their surfaces etched with flowing glyphs. In the center stands a large crystalline console, cracked but still pulsing with residual energy.
The drone hums faintly, indicating me to go to the console.
I touch it gingerly. It responds to resonance, light flickering, lines racing across the surface. When I channel the Chime’s frequency through my palm, the glyphs align into a pattern.
A holographic projection unfolds, lines, arcs, and circular symbols hovering in mid-air.
[VioletVex]: What is that?!
[Hymnline]: That’s not a weapon… looks architectural.
[Archivolt]: a blueprint?
The image rotates slowly, a massive circular structure with descending layers, crowned by an open dome. Beneath it, a central basin etched with harmonic markings.
I can’t read its purpose, but I can feel its precision. This was design, not decoration.
Rhel tilts his head. “A city?”
“Maybe,” I answer. “Or a memory.”
The projection flickers, then collapses, leaving only the faint hum of dying power. I slip the crystal core from the console, small enough to hold, still vibrating faintly.
Whatever this is, it belonged to something greater.
I stand, the drone still watching. “We’re done here. Collect what data you can and mark the route. The Reach will be sealed until I return with reinforcements.”
As we make for the exit, the drone’s single eye dims, then steadies, a silent vow of survival.
The Ring stirs again, the voices rising behind my thoughts.
[carapace_kid]: He’s bringing loot!
[HexPaladin]: That crystal is glowing even after power loss, did that console activate it?.
[VioletVex]: He doesn’t even know what he’s holding, does he?
They’re right. I don’t.
But something in the resonance whispers that this blueprint, whatever it depicts, will change everything.
The wounded drone’s hum falters with every step we take toward the surface. It drifts behind Rhel, tethered by thin strands of resonance that keep its frame upright. Its single eye flickers faintly, catching each reflection of the crystal corridors.
The others sense its pain; their tones shift to match, carrying it gently through the dark. No one speaks, not because of fear, but because voice feels redundant here. We are the sound.
When the ridge light finally bleeds in from above, I let the thought pass through the link: Home.
The word hums between us, and they obey.
Rhel and Ira pause beside the exit. The drone tilts its head toward me, a faint sound escaping its chest, gratitude, or apology. I raise a hand, giving the intent shape: Return. Heal.
Rhel understands without question. He and Ira turn back, guiding the broken construct south along the marked road. Their presence fades, absorbed by the endless dunes.
Only Seris, Thane, and I remain.
The silence of the Reach presses close again, but fainter now, as if even that void knows to respect the Dominion’s tone. Ahead, the land slopes upward. We follow the incline until the black sand gives way to streaks of red. The color catches the moonlight, a subtle shimmer, alive with heat even at night.
Seris crouches, running her fingers through the grains. “Different composition,” she murmurs through the link. “Scorched silica. Volcanic, maybe.”
Thane’s tone vibrates lower, uncertain. “It hums differently. Too high to belong to us.”
I let the resonance roll across my palm, comparing tones. The difference is there, the Dominion’s low, patient rhythm versus this northern hum, sharp and bright, pulsing like sunlight caught in metal.
Scott.
Thalos of the Sunforged. Where his kingdom borders mine.
I lift the Dominion Chime and plant its end in the sand. The bells answer with a deep note, sinking through the dune. The tone spreads in both directions, one line dark, one bright, and where they meet, the sound fractures like light through glass.
The border.
I trace it quietly. We can reach him.
Thane tilts his head. “You mean to travel north?”
“Eventually,” I answer. “But not yet. The road must reach this place first. I won’t walk halfway blind again.”
Seris hums a low assent. “A road through the ridge?”
“Through, around, beneath, whatever it takes. I want the path open and fortified. The library we found holds knowledge worth defending. We’ll clear the warren, harvest its crystal, and study what remains.”
The Chime hums faintly as if agreeing. The sound resonates across the dunes, subtle but lasting.
The Ring of the Outer Court stirs again; thoughts flicker faintly.
[VioletVex]: He’s planning expansion, north road confirmed.
[Archivolt]: Is that border heat distortion? Look at the color shift.
[carapace_kid]: That’s Thalos’s zone! Cross over! Cross over!
Their voices fade into static amusement. I ignore them, focusing on the horizon, red meeting black under the thin silver arc of the moon.
We turn back toward home. The march is long but easy now; the hum of the Dominion grows louder with each step, welcoming, familiar. When the fortress finally rises from the dunes, its star-shaped walls gleam under morning light. Drones move along its edges, resin hardening in pale gold seams.
At the center, the new courtyard yawns open, a hollow space left bare at my command, waiting for purpose.
Cast stands at the gate, waiting. “You return unbroken,” she says through the link, her tone warm with relief.
“The ridge holds ruins,” I answer. “Old knowledge. The drone survived.”
She tilts her head slightly. “Then the Dominion remembers more than it thought.”
I place the recovered crystal into her hands. “Study this. Whatever it was, it belonged to something older than us. I want every pattern it carries deciphered.”
Her golden eyes catch the light. “And the ridge?”
“A patrol road. Two branches: one to the ruins, one continuing north toward the red sands. We’ll send workers under guard once the night cools.”
Cast bows her head. “As you will, my king.”
As she turns to relay the order, I glance upward. The fortress’s heart still hums faintly with unspent energy, the shape of something waiting to be born.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Light from the Pale Crown spreads across the polished obsidian like a spill of quiet, and with it the Dominion’s tempo reasserts itself, not a song now but a worklist. I settle into the throne and the world arranges itself into tasks.
First order: capacity. The hatcheries must run three shifts. I can see them in my mind’s eye, tiered racks of resin-warmed brood-pods, conveyor veins feeding larvae to nurse chambers, and the numbers follow: production up ten percent if we add two brood chambers and re-route resin lines. Resins are the slow economy here; without more storage, a long construction or unexpected harvest will starve the engines. I tap that thought lightly and the Ring answers by flashing the heap-storage metrics in a corner of my mind: current resin stores, daily yield, projected burn-rate with a new build queue. Its good to have someone in my chat that has such an engineer's mind.
Food is a problem and always will be. The drones can harvest sap from the deep resin pits, but it’s low-efficiency protein. We need grazers, domesticated herds that can be corralled in shaded pits, and farms carved beneath the basalt ridges where night keeps them cool. More workers, more feed, more breeding cycles. I schedule expansions to the forges that process resin into edible paste, and I mentally flag the greenhouse modules for priority.
Personnel: drones are plentiful and obedient, but the Dominion needs thinkers as much as muscle. Hekari, the sentient cadres, are the nodes that plan, who can hold watch and execute tactics when I am absent. We are a hive, and hives change by evolution. The tech tree in my head branches: basic drone → armored drone → proto-Hekari → full Hekari. Each step demands resources. Resonance can nudge growth; carefully applied it accelerates structural changes in a brood, but it is not a shortcut. It is expensive. Tithe would help if we had it. For now, we must convert by practice and sacrifice: more artisan time, focused exposure to adaptive stimuli, and a small cadre of veteran Hekari tutors to shepherd the transition.
Autonomy is the next feature on the list. I cannot sleep in Nod forever. The waking world insists on habits: morning alarms, office networks, rent and ramen and a life that keeps me brittle. So our nation must run missions without me. That means patrol protocols, rules of engagement, mission templates. I imagine them as queued tasks:
Patrol group A: perimeter reconnaissance, passive listening, report back on odd tonal anomalies.
Patrol group B: foraging and salvage, harvest Sileth glass samples for study.
Patrol group C: rapid response, garrison, hold, and delay until Hekari reinforcements arrive.
I assign priorities, visualizing a production queue where two hatcheries focus brood-production and one artisan workshop diverts to craft resonant shackles and listening posts. I draft supply lines in my head: resin stores at the fortress feed the construction gang; a relay of cache points every ten miles will let us push a forward garrison without starving it.
Cast arrives without knocking. Her presence is a neat, practiced chord across the room, calm, efficient, made of small noises that mean everything. She kneels just inside the throne-room shadows; the captains stand a step back, their attention folded and patient.
“The crystal,” she says, and the words fall into the room like a page turned. “We have studied it.”
I let the question hang. The Ring pulses a soft, impatient glow. Spectators will lean in for anything labeled ‘ancient.’ The chat flutters already.
[VioletVex]: Oooh? Crystal lore?
[Archivolt]: schematic incoming? cool.
Cast gives me the crystal. “It records structure,” she tells me. “Not a language we read easily, but its refractive lattice shows outlines: columns, a large central chamber, a high space open to the sky. The materials channel resonance in particular ways. Whoever built this sought to shape sound as architecture.”
She describes mechanics: vaulted rooms that accept tuned vibration, a core that amplifies and stores harmonic signatures, and chambers laid out to collect ambient tonal data from the surrounding terrain. “It appears,” she says, “to be a public place, a site for the collection and concentration of resonance.”
I picture it rising in the empty courtyard, a roofless structure that drinks the sky, a place where the Dominion could gather both sound and sight. The thought appeals to strategy and to show. An open-air complex built from black glass, a psychological anchor as much as a functional one. If enemies come, a replica of the throne inside could be used as a decoy; it will buy time. Practical theater.
“Build it in the center,” I say. “Over the courtyard we left empty. Make the core echo our signature. If we are attacked, the false throne buys minutes.”
Cast nods, and the captains’ tones shift as the command flows out to the network. Orders in the Dominion don’t need whistles and banners: intention travels like a tide and the drones take its shore. Work gangs form. The build queue grows: star-shaped foundations, resin smelters moving to continuous output, glass-cutters tuning facets to frequency. I watch, mentally queuing priorities in
descending order: foundations, resonant columns, storage vaults, the central plinth. Add slots for artisan workshops to carve the insulating lattices.
Then logistics. “Ten patrol groups,” I say aloud, partly for the gravity of sound in the room. I need to remember that chat cant hear my thoughts. “Each group two Hekari and twenty drones. Send them along every mile of our border. Listening posts every mile, too, thin rods dipped in resin and tuned to echo the throne. If anything crosses our sands, we will hear its footfall.”
Cast repeats the numbers, her cadence a confirmation. A crowd of small chatnotes flickers through the ring.
[carapace_kid]: patrolling bros! go bugs go
[Thrumline]: listening posts = intel bonanza, love it
I add specifics because I think in contingencies: mobile caches along the north road to support extended patrol rotations; a rotating schedule so no single node is fatigued; scout-threads to test for silence-voids like the ones that swallowed our missing groups. Protocol: any silence beyond two minutes triggers a pullback call and a triage insertion. Tagged Hekari tutors will train drones to mimic low-level problem solving, trap-finding, wound triage, short-term route planning. We need the operation to survive a night without me.
Cast bows her head and begins to hum orders into the mesh of the hive. The sound ripples outward. Drones shift from idle to purpose. In the courtyard, workers begin to lay out the star’s foundation; they carry black glass slabs and set their edges by pitch, not sight. The resonance lines they make are precise: curves that carry tone farther, pedestals tuned to hold a note for hours.
I give one final instruction. “The library ruin schematic, keep it sealed for analysis until the building has its shell. I want the structure unspoiled until we can test it properly.”
“And the patrols?” Cast asks.
“Start tonight. Ten groups of ten drones and two Hekari gaurd; the rest stage at dawn. Listening posts every mile. Reinforce the forward caches along the ridge. Make safe paths outward: shaded pits for grazers, insulated corridors for resin transport. Make the supply chain redundant. If you find any of the sable choir try and capture them in nets. We could use them later.”
She inclines her head in reverence and departs. The captains move out like shadows following its owner, not waiting for shouted orders but matching the lift and fall of my attention. I feel the Dominion align: new brood chambers queued, artisan hands redirected, patrol threads spinning down the map like new lines on a circuit board.
Alone for a moment, I let the impression settle, the kingdom is not a body without me; it has become a machine that thinks in my absence. The throne is no longer a single seat but a command hub that can project through pitch and intent.
A ping of the Ring pulls me; a thread from the surface: the chat has aggregated clips of our morning sortie.
[Archivolt]: he’s making roads!When will he meet another king?
[VioletVex]: build that thing. New building hype.
I smile despite myself. They don’t yet know what it is, only that it moves, and that it matters. Momentum is enough for now. We’ll give them that, and something to watch.
My hands rest on the arms of the throne. Through the resonance, I weave one last directive into the Dominion’s rhythm: an education corps, Hekari teachers chosen to guide the next hundred drones into thought. If this kingdom is to live beyond my nights, then it must learn to think without me. Minds that remember. Voices that endure.
The Ring quiets in approval. The hum steadies. The Dominion works.
I rise from the throne and step into the corridors of the Singing Citidel.
I’ve never truly explored its depths, not properly. With little night left before waking, there’s no time for another expedition beyond the dunes, but enough to see the world I’ve built.
Chat reactions flicker in the corner of my awareness.
[VioletVex]: castle tour?? finally
[Archivolt]: look at the detail on those walls holy,
[carapace_kid]: bro the hive never SLEEPS
The drones pay my presence no mind. They labor without pause, their movements seamless as clockwork. In a human castle, servants would stop, bow, murmur greetings as their ruler passed. Here, the hum is their devotion; the work never stops. To them, my voice is law, but my body, my passing, means nothing.
When I return to the royal quarters, I unfasten the armor, dented, cracked, still faintly singing from the last battle, and set it aside. A thought sends a pulse through the network. Moments later, an artisan hum answers from the depths, a promise of repair.
I catch my reflection in the mirror again. This time, I don’t flinch. The crown hovers above the same pale face, the same gold-lit eyes. I look at him, at me, and the unease fades.
This is me. Just as much as the man in the waking world. Just as much as any avatar I’ve ever shaped.
I draw a breath, close my eyes, and will myself home.
The hum folds inward, soft and absolute.
The darkness rises, warm, encompassing, and the Singing Citidel fades to black.