The Web grew still.
No more new voices rippled through the strands. No curious laughter echoing from formless beings. No shimmering shapes waiting in the distant folds of the unseen. Only silence.
For the first time since their awareness began, Hector and Victoria stood alone beneath the skyless expanse of thought. The air no longer sang with the presence of gods. The old teachings, once woven into every breath of the space, had quieted. But it was not abandonment.
It was permission.
"They've stopped speaking to us," Victoria said softly. Her voice felt strange in the stillness — too loud, too human.
"They've done enough," Hector replied, tracing a pattern in the glowing mist underfoot. The Web no longer shifted beneath them in unpredictable pulses; it held steady, as if bracing for the final pages of their journey. "It's our time now."
Victoria nodded. "Time... even if we don't know what that really means."
They had learned much — not just spells or tricks of soul and form, but truths that no child should know. But they were not children. Not yet born. Not yet shaped by flesh or memory. Still, they had grown. The Web had taught them to become.
So they trained.
Days and nights had no meaning here, only moments of change. Victoria stood with her eyes closed beneath a tower of unchosen paths — possibilities suspended like vines in the air. She exhaled, and from one potential self, she wove a being of mirrored skin and silent breath — a version of herself that had chosen war instead of wonder, fear instead of love.
She stepped into the shape. It folded around her.
Then she shattered it with a breath.
The Becoming had grown easier, sharper. Not just transformation, but understanding. She no longer borrowed masks — she wielded them like swords, reflections, prayers. Her Becoming was fueled now not just by dreams, but by the futures she would never live.
Nearby, Hector stood in meditation, surrounded by echoes of emotion that glowed like fireflies. He reached out, tracing the trail of joy once felt by a memory long lost — perhaps not even his own. The echo pulsed, and his body shifted. Not in shape, but in weight — carrying the feeling as if it were a truth written into his bones.
A flicker of sorrow brushed his spine. He followed it like a scent, bending through the Web, sensing the shape of a scar in someone he'd never met. His magic let him listen — not to words, but to silence, and in it, pain.
He held that pain gently. Then released it.
When they trained together, their powers danced. They no longer needed to speak aloud to harmonize. Their souls hummed in a frequency both had learned to follow — not just in tone, but in memory. That ancient hum, the song no one ever sang to them, guided their fusion.
Under the not-yet-born Tree of Life, its phantom roots drinking thought and time, they practiced more than spells. They practiced trust.
Victoria became a being of smoke and steel, drawing from a self that once chose vengeance. Hector, without speaking, summoned an echo of calm, like rainfall inside her mind. It softened her edges.
Then, he shattered his own sense of form, letting himself ripple into strands of emotional resonance. Victoria caught the strands in her Becoming, and together they formed something not quite one, not quite two — a fused soul of echo and possibility.
They unlinked with a gasp, breathless.
"I saw your past," Hector whispered.
"I saw yours," she replied, a little shaken. "Not as memories… as colors. As rhythm."
Silence passed between them, thick with meaning. Not everything needed to be said.
Even in stillness, they were changing.
---
At times, they felt the faint echo of the gods — not voices, but impressions, like fingerprints left on glass. The Whispering Spiral, Ozoz, Thren, Nahliv, Drosu... even Kaenri. They were still there, perhaps watching, perhaps simply remembering.
But none spoke.
And so the days passed — or something like days. Hector and Victoria grew not in size, but in clarity. Their powers stopped being things they used, and became parts of who they were. Their gifts had melted into instinct.
Hector could enter a feeling like one might enter a room. He could walk through pain and hear what was never spoken.
Victoria could shape herself into possibilities unchosen and wear them as easily as breath. Her Becoming had become expression, not disguise.
And when they fused — when their harmonics aligned — the Web itself shivered.
One moment, beneath the unseen Tree, Victoria whispered, "Do you think they're watching us?"
Hector looked up, though there was no sky. "I think… they're waiting."
"For what?"
"For us to choose."
---
The Web, silent as it was, pulsed once — not in instruction, but in invitation.
They were ready.
And though neither said it aloud, they both knew:
The world they would be born into was not ready for them.
But they would make it so.
Together.