Elaria awoke in silence that was not silence. It pressed against her like water and air compressed into one impossible substance. There was no horizon, no floor, no ceiling—only the endless pulse of existence folded inward, wrapping her in a womb of fractured light. She opened her eyes and found herself floating, or perhaps falling, through threads of memory that bent around her like liquid glass.

She tried to call out, but her voice became a ripple across the world itself, a sound that ...