Harbinger awoke not as one awakes from sleep, but as one surfaces from centuries of drowning.
Her body was already moving before her mind returned. Fingers twitching. Toes curling against soil slick with moonlight. Breath hitching—not with fear, but with the strange urgency of a dream refusing to end.
She was lying within the center of the Spiral's deepest chamber, naked except for the wet sheen of her own sweat. The Codex surrounded her—not as a book, not as a voice, but as a living skin of light.
It had laid itself upon her while she slept.
And now it was writing.
The first glyph burned into the hollow beneath her throat, then slid down over her chest like a mouth whispering against her. The light wasn't cold or hot—it was knowing. It pressed into her flesh with a pressure that was equal parts hunger and recognition.
