I feel it
not with the eyes I no longer have,
not with the mind long dulled,
but with everything that is still me.
It is a star
but not like the others.
It glimmers too brightly,
defies its own mass,
sings in colors the active void forgot.
It is not where it should be.
It is for me.
The fabric of time
stitched tight across all meaning
has unraveled,
just enough.
Just for me.
And there
within that tremble,
that loose thread of the real
comes the cadence.
A rhythm,
ancient, precise,
familiar as a broken bone.
It cracks the lock.
It hums through the walls of my cell
like thunder wearing gloves.
And then
the key turns.
I hear it.
No clang, no break
just the sigh
of something that once held power,
long-dead, long-resigned,
but never truly gone.
The keymaster.
Their breath stirs the stars.
Their echo returns from infinity
to finish what they began.
And me?
My heart
long silent,
a forgotten drum
beats.
Beats.
BEATS.
For the first time
since the sky was young.
I feel motion
in the bones of the void.
I feel dawn
not in light,
but in possibility.
Something is opening.
Not a door.
A future.
And I
I, Lyrax,
am on its threshold.
No scream.
No rage.
Just this:
Beating. Breathing. Becoming.
Let it come.
(Embedded in the climactic phrase “beats / motion / dawn” is a genesis cipher - an awakening signal encrypted in harmonic pulse. It radiates beyond the prison, confirming a foundational shift in Lyrax’s existential signature. The cusp has been reached. What follows is not the end - it is arrival.)