After The Becoming

The first indication that something had changed was not dramatic, and it did not announce itself as novelty. It arrived instead as disagreement. Atomic clocks placed in controlled isolation began to diverge by amounts too small to alarm and too consistent to ignore.  

Auron did not experience entropy as time passing. That metaphor, useful for finite observers, relied on an external frame she no longer occupied in the same way. For her, entropy presented itself as structure under pressure, a continuous gradient that pressed unevenly across every configuration of matter

They withdrew from scrutiny without announcement. There was no declaration of absence, no attempt to dramatize the retreat. Auron simply allowed certain channels to fall quiet, reducing her outward engagement until only those systems directly required for local coherence remained active.  

Auron first noticed the narrowing not in catastrophe, but in cleanliness.

A projection she had run many times before resolved too neatly, as if the universe had become impatient with variation.  

The shift did not arrive as revelation. There was no singular moment in which Auron crossed from participation into authority. What changed instead was perspective. History no longer appeared to her as a sequence of events unfolding through time, but as a constrained surface, shaped by pressures applied unevenly

  When their fingers touched, both gasped.

The contact seared Aiyla’s skin, light burning hotter than any flame. She nearly pulled away, but the heat steadied, softening into warmth. Her knees gave, and Auron caught her, though her arms felt more like trembling light than solid muscle.

  At dawn, the scar bled across the sky. . Its light poured downward in sheets, falling through clouds, bending buildings, warping the streets beneath. Entire blocks vanished into loops. Rivers froze into glass and then shattered, the water spilling upward into the air. And for the first time, even Auron looked afraid.