It was a voice strong enough to define reality before the gods could.
It was language.
Aria stepped to Aiden's side and began the ritual of Naming.
"My story begins in silence."
Others followed.
"But silence was not stillness."
"It was the waiting before the sound."
"The breath before the scream."
"The hush before the war cry."
Aiden felt the rhythm build.
Not magic.
Not even memory.
Meaning.
The foundation of creation itself.
And in that rhythm, a new word began to form.
They didn't speak it.
They couldn't.
It wasn't shaped yet.
It was still being forged.
Like a star coalescing from dust.
Like a name forming in the mouth of a child.
It was the beginning of a language of resistance.
Something the Outer Gods had no concept of—because they had always relied on absence, not assertion.
Aiden reached out.
He didn't grab the word.
He gave to it.
Poured into it all he was—all the Pact was.
Their grief. Their love. Their anger. Their hope.
And the word pulsed.
