Morning meant nothing here.
The sky had already settled into its eternal violet, lightless and endless. The rituals moved forward anyway. Routine did not require time.
Daus Ember moved through the eastern wing, her mobility platform gliding in perfect silence. A stack of folded linens rested in her arms—part of the day's assigned chore rotations. Sister Raleth had given the order directly.
She found Maris near the stairwell, kneeling beside an open utility crate, sorting tools into neat rows. Her hands moved with quiet precision. She didn't look up.
"Linen rotation," Daus said.
Maris stood and approached without hesitation.
Daus held out the stack.
Maris took it carefully, her hands brushing just slightly against Daus's as the weight shifted. The contact was brief—unremarkable to anyone watching.
But Daus felt the slip of something tucked between the folds. Light. Thin. Not fabric.
Paper.
She didn't look down. Didn't pause.
She turned and continued down the hall.
Only once she'd reached the end of the corridor, out of sight, did she unfold the note tucked in her sleeve.
It wasn't a message.
It was a shape.
A line, drawn in red ink—rising, falling, rising again.
A pulse.
Not sacred.
Not sanctioned.
Blasphemy.
She folded it again, slower this time, and pressed it flat against her palm.
She let the platform carry her down the next hall, its gentle hum filling the silence she refused to break.
Her fingers still pressed the folded paper against her palm, tighter than necessary.
She could report it. She still might.
But it wasn't just protocol that made her hesitate.
It was history.
Not the world's—hers.
She told herself she wasn't holding it tightly. That she hadn't slowed. That she wasn't spiraling again.
But she was.
Because once, not so long ago, someone had told her the Ignitors were grace.
A woman with quiet eyes and hands that knew how to calm every storm. A voice like something soft and warm when the world had gone too sharp.
Daus had loved her. Not blindly—but with belief. The kind of belief that says, If the world burned down, at least we're still standing.
But the Anima Ignition didn't leave room for belief. It left rules. Structures. Systems that made sense when nothing else did.
Her friend—her lover—had followed that sense. She hadn't fallen. She'd knelt. And she wanted Daus to kneel too.
Daus refused.
Because her sister couldn't kneel. Couldn't tether. Dawn hadn't received "the gift." They called it a defect. Her sister just called it living.
She couldn't leave her behind. Wouldn't.
But the woman she loved saw it as disobedience. As weakness.
"She'll be safe with them. But you—you could be more. You could be saved."
When persuasion failed, she sold her sister out. Delivered her to the Temple of Spark like a failed offering—and dragged Daus behind her.
Daus remembered standing before the Halo for the first time. Violet fire seared into her wrist. Her sister screaming in the next room.
She didn't even scream.
She just said yes.
To everything.
To anything that would keep her sister alive.
Now she drifted down the corridor as an Ember—lowest of the low. No voice. No place. Just orders. Patrols. Quiet.
And a girl who had just slipped her a line—a jagged rhythm that didn't belong. A symbol of something forbidden.
Something alive.
Daus clenched her jaw.
She didn't have room for another friend. Not one who would ask her to choose.
But she kept the paper anyway.
The platform carried her past the south wing, where the air changed.
The hall narrowed here. Lighting dimmed. Doors fewer. Most Sisters never passed this way unless ordered to.
Daus did not stop.
She never did.
But her eyes flicked once to the frosted glass panel recessed into the left-hand wall.
A room behind it. No markings. No sound.
Just presence.
Stillness that felt different than the one they worshipped.
The door had not opened in weeks. Maybe months.
But she knew who waited behind it.
Her sister hadn't left the Temple since the day Daus stepped forward, eyes down, voice steady, and offered everything she had in exchange for mercy.
Mercy that Dawn had never asked for.
Hadn't asked to be spared. Hadn't asked to be protected. But she was.
And in a world where nothing moved, where no heart had beat in fifty years, Dawn still lived with the quiet ache of knowing her sister had traded something precious—
not for survival,
but for a version of protection that never felt like freedom.
Daus finished her patrol route in silence. Nothing unusual. Nothing unexpected. That was the way she liked it.
She filed her final observation, sealed the shift report, and awaited reassignment.
A quiet chime sounded in her ear.
Swap detail: Observation rotation. Linen duty hall.
Another Ember had been stationed there—standard coverage.
Daus acknowledged without question. No reason to ask. She redirected her platform toward the southern wing.
Daus approached the linen hall on her platform, gliding through the dim corridor as the other Ember disengaged from her post without a word. A silent nod, and then she was gone.
Daus logged her presence, as expected. Routine. Predictable.
Maris was finishing up—folding the last few pieces with neat, practiced hands. She didn't look up. She didn't need to.
Daus didn't speak.
She never had to here.
Maris broke the silence first. Quietly.
"You usually take the outer corridors this time of day."
Daus said nothing.
Maris didn't press.
She placed another cloth on the stack. Slower this time. Not hesitant—measured.
"I've been thinking," she said. "About how long we've been in the same place."
She finally looked at Daus. There was no fear in her face. No defiance.
Just something settled. Something she didn't want to carry alone anymore.
"You've never turned me in. Not once. Even when you should have."
Another pause. Then—
"I think your sister's in danger."
Daus blinked. Once.
Maris didn't give her time to respond. Not yet.
"Not the way the others mean when they talk about anomalies. Raleth's pushing. She's saying someone like her shouldn't be allowed to just sit and wait."
She folded one last cloth. Perfectly even.
"She's using the word reassignment. And not the kind that keeps someone whole."
Daus didn't move. Didn't shift.
But the silence between them changed.
Maris looked away. Not out of shame—just to give her space.
"I didn't say any of this."
"But I thought… if it were me, I'd want to know."
Daus said nothing.
She stood still, the platform humming faintly beneath her—quiet as breath held too long.
Maris turned away, giving her the courtesy of space. She knew not to linger.
Daus remained.
The note in her sleeve felt heavier than it had an hour ago. Her hands at her sides felt too still. Too composed.
Her sister.
The word barely formed in her mind anymore without a pang behind her ribs.
She had already given everything for her.
Her body. Her silence. Her name.
And now someone was asking her to give more. To risk all of it—not to protect, but to trust.
Maris hadn't asked for that.
Not with words.
But trust didn't come in declarations. It came in things that couldn't be undone.
In linen stacks and folded messages.
In letting someone see the side of you that still hurt.
Daus closed her eyes, just for a breath.
The last time she gave someone everything, it had cost her more than she knew she had.
And still—
She hadn't thrown the paper away.
She hadn't walked past Maris.
She hadn't told anyone.
Her silence wasn't loyalty.
It was indecision.
And the longer it held, the more dangerous it became.
And in this place—where time had flatlined and nothing truly moved—indecision felt safe. It could be stretched forever, folded into routine, buried under obedience.
But this wasn't one of those choices.
This wasn't a task she could repeat tomorrow.
This was her sister.
And now had arrived without warning, without motion, without mercy.
No alarms. No echoes. Just the slow, suffocating knowledge that if she hesitated too long, the world might not punish her—
But it would move on without her.
Daus stood still a moment longer, caught between impulse and ritual. Her body moved like it remembered needing air, though it hadn't for fifty years. The breath she took didn't serve a function—it simply gave her something to hold onto.
She stepped out, just far enough to let the silence fold behind her, the door left ajar as if she meant to return.
She closed her eyes again, held the breath she didn't need, and tried to remember what it had felt like—before all of this—to choose something for herself.
Maris sat as she always did, her back straight, hands folded neatly in her lap.
There was no patrol in sight, but that meant nothing. Someone was always watching. Always logging behavior. Stillness was expected. Cleanliness, precision—quiet gratitude for her continued breath.
The linens were folded. Her part was done.
So she waited.
The message had been passed. That was all she could do. The rest—Daus, the decision, the consequence—it was all out of her hands now.
She let her gaze drift toward the high windows—not directly, just enough to catch the light.
The sky looked the same. Violet, unshifting. But something in the stillness didn't sit the way it used to. Not broken—just… flexed. As if the quiet she'd lived her life inside had drawn a breath it didn't mean to.
She couldn't see beyond these walls. Couldn't know what had stirred.
But the Sisters had been walking faster.
Orders came with tighter phrasing.
And this morning, before the linens, she'd seen something strange: a communicator not usually stationed in their wing had been rolled through. Reassigned, they said. No explanation.
She was untethered—but not unknowing.
Sometimes, the world whispered before it moved.
Sometimes, the whisper was the movement.
And whatever was shifting, it wasn't far.
"I didn't say any of this."
"But I thought… if it were me, I'd want to know."