CHAPTER 157: THE VOID THAT ADJUSTS

POV: The Void

“You think silence means absence.”

“You are still here,” I say, not to the child directly but to the space shaped like him.

The bridge hums faintly, not defensive, not hostile but Settled.

The echo of his presence lingers the way heat does after a fire has gone out.

“I expected you to recoil,” I continued. “That is what living things do when they touch me.”

There was no answer and that, too, is an answer.

I fold my vastness ...