There was no dawn in the new world—not because the sun had not risen, but because time itself had yet to be written.
The forked world turned lazily in its voidstuff cradle, spinning around nothing, anchored by nothing save thought.
Biomes bloomed and perished on its surface in gentle, unwanted rhythms—snowfields became jungles, ruins melted into flawless towers, cities phased in and out of being without ever quite being.
And at the center of it all were the four of them.
Kaito. Nyra. Kael. Iris.
The first writers of a world free of design.
They had not created it. Not entirely. The Fork had been seeded from the breakdown—a tear, a deviation—but it had been shaped by their survival, their choices, their refusal to be written by another's hand.
And now, in the aftermath of choice, they stood in the unfinished breath between what had been and what could be.
They had been standing on the same cliff for what felt like hours.
