In the aftermath of the child's birth, time on the floating mountain of Hubin moved with a heavy, precarious urgency.
Erin Volter's physical body recovered with staggering speed. By the third day following the harrowing labor, the lingering ache in her abdomen had completely dissolved, and her strength had fully returned.
Yet, physical health brought no peace to her mind.
Erin spent those quiet days sitting on the wooden porch of her small house, holding the infant in her lap while the little blue dragon—a tiny, serpentine whelp with crackling, dark-violet scales played around her. The baby boy never cried, never fussed, and required no sustenance. He simply shifted his dark, non-Euclidean limbs in the quiet air, a living tear in the fabric of reality resting against her chest. To Erin, the child was a physical mirror of her worst choices, a constant, silent reminder of what she had sought, what she had gained, and the terrifying price she had paid.
