Location:Seven Peaks — Command Center, Shelters, Eastern Terrace
Date/Time:TC1856.08.16 (00:00 – Dawn)
The silence lasted forty-seven minutes.
Not the natural silence of a night without sound — the unnatural silence of a planet that had been vibrating at one beat per second for months and had suddenly, completely, stopped. The absence pressed against ears and skin and the deep places where Pillar Soul connections interfaced with the substrate. The absence was a presence of its own — heavy, expectant, the held breath of something vast waiting to see what came next.
In the shelter, Elian hadn't moved. His hand in Maren's. Both of them pouring resonance into the substrate through the contact — not because anyone had asked them to but because the instinct of an anchor was to hold, and the ground felt like it needed holding.
