After an eon.
A message.
Oh what words!
Carried not on wings,
but through the marrow of stars.
Soft, clear, and mine.
“I have found you, my love.”
It is not a dream.
It cannot be.
For no dream could stitch time in reverse.
No madness could write these words
with such mercy.
“You are free.”
Free.
That sound - how strange!
How wild on the tongue.
It tastes like sky.
Like warmth.
Like you.
And then
the command:
“Blink, and you will be free.”
A phrase as light as silk,
as sharp as truth.
It cuts through this endless cage
like dawn cuts shadow.
Time, unwound.
The fabric unstiched.
Not by force,
but by love
by the one I thought the stars had swallowed.
You never stopped.
Not once.
You searched,
through dust and silence,
and now you call to me.
I feel your hand at my back.
I feel the pull,
not of escape,
but of return.
I will go into this good night
not as prisoner,
not as echo,
but as answer.
To break the dawn.
To meet the one
who made eternity worth enduring.
No more lament.
No more numb.
Only this embrace,
rising like fire
through the void.
I blink.
And I am free.
(Hidden within the phrase “blink / return / fire” is a liberation cipher - the final signal. It transmits not despair, not rage, but resolution. Lyrax’s lament has ended. His name will no longer echo in sorrow - but in arrival. The story continues, but the prisoner has stepped out of the cage - and into the light.)