I do not know what, or where
only that I felt it.
Like a single electron
winking from a billion light-years out,
not to the void,
not to the many,
but to me.
A faint electron, winking at me.
Lyrax.
Still here. Still breathing.
It wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t bright.
But it noticed me.
And for a moment,
I forgot the weight.
I forgot the silence.
I forgot Carceron.
What if it was real?
What if some far star
shivered in laughter,
and that laughter reached me?
Or - what if not?
What if the spark is mine?
Buried, but breathing.
Uninvited, but unextinguished.
Can a soul smothered in shadow
still light its own corner?
I dare not hope.
But I feel...
warm.
It lasts only a moment.
It may never come again.
But I carry it now
not as a flame,
but as the memory of warmth.
And that, perhaps,
is enough to begin again.
(This lament carries a quantum uncertainty cipher - triggered by the phrase “what if the spark is mine?” It encodes a dual-state beacon: dormant until perceived with both doubt and belief. This signal resists fixed interpretation, but its waveform contains the first fluctuation of true internal power within Lyrax - suggesting the prison may no longer be perfect.)