The sanctum could no longer hold her.
Talia screamed—not from pain, but from overflow. Light burst from her skin in pulses, carving runes into the stone walls, unraveling time around her body. Moments fractured. Servants found themselves in two places at once. Kaelira aged five years in a blink, then returned to her youth in the next breath.
The womb of the world convulsed.
And within it, a god sought to be born.
Lucien stood at her side, face pale beneath the flickering madness. His hand on her stomach trembled—not from fear, but from awe. The flesh beneath was no longer warm. It glowed with divine geometry, impossible angles rotating beneath skin.
"She's… not dying," Kaelira whispered, watching from the edge of the sanctum. "She's… transfiguring."
Talia opened her eyes.
They bled symbols.
"It hurts," she said, voice distorting, speaking in three tongues at once.
Lucien touched her forehead. "We prepared for war. We did not prepare for this."
She seized his wrist.
"Prepare me, then. I need to survive the birth. Or the world won't."
Her belly expanded beyond logic. Not merely swollen with life, but with concept. Time bent around her womb. All possible futures radiated from her navel—some where the child never existed, others where it had already devoured suns.
Lucien summoned the aberrants.
"We forge a chamber that does not obey law," he commanded. "Reality must be suspended. Cause and effect must be… delayed."
Kaelira bowed. "We'll build it with paradox."
And so they did.
They raised a room of unmaterial stone, made from memories of things that never happened. Walls wept when no one looked. Floors became ceilings when questioned. Doors led backward into thoughts.
Talia was carried inside, floating.
Inside her, the unborn god began to push against the membrane of flesh and reality.
Lucien stood watch, blade in hand—not to fight, but to cut open the veil of law if necessary.
Then came the contractions.
But they weren't physical. They were ontological. Concepts snapped. Gravity inverted. Names were forgotten. One priest screamed as his language was eaten mid-sentence.
Talia cried out, not from pain, but from multiplicity.
Her body split into three versions—each at a different stage of labor. Past. Present. Future.
Lucien ran between them, anchoring her with touch, voice, blood.
"Stay now," he commanded.
Talia focused—and all three merged into one.
The sanctum imploded.
But within the paradox-chamber, time held.
Talia rose from the birthing slab, skin cracked with light, mouth open in silent song. Her womb opened—not torn, not sliced, but revised. And from it, something emerged.
Not a baby.
Not a god.
Something between.
Wrapped in veils of forgotten prophecy. Eyes closed. Skin inked with moving scripture. Its breath rewrote the wind.
Kaelira and the aberrants fell prostrate.
Lucien knelt.
Talia stood—barefoot, bloodless, reborn as She Who Bore the Impossible.
And in her arms, the child stirred.
His first word was not a cry.
It was a law.
Reality changed to obey it.