The silence hadn't vanished. It had been named.
Garnished.
Seated in.
It was still there, though.
Not as a threat—but as a question. One that wasn't grammatical. One that was beyond any identifiable process or failure mode.
And during the following days, Kael couldn't remain stationary.
He had always been the kind to migrate. The kind to repair. Construct. Reconstruct. Re-envision.
Even during the Fork's darkest days—when software collapsed and corruption consumed memory like a fire—he had mapped its broken strata as a cartographer in a war against entropy. Each fracture was a summons. A puzzle to be solved. A reason to act.
But now, there was no code to correct. No data-loss event. No breach. Just. silence. A root-pain—one that bled not, but pulsed with something older than mistake.
Something akin to remorse.
