There was a commotion and hustle inside the small adobe house.

A man moved frantically from one spot to another, stuffing two small suitcases with clothes. One was for him, the other for his daughter, who followed his anxious footsteps closely. But the little girl, always in his way, kept pulling at his arm—she wanted to stop, unlike him.

There was no drama; there were crescendos in the sky on their way.

"What are we going to do? Where are we going? Let's not leave."

"Where is she? Where is she? Where is she?"

The man tried to answer his daughter's questions while rummaging through drawers, checking if anything important had been forgotten.

>>shattered glass, thunder's echo, iron taste of fear, whispering trees, soft glow of ember.>>

Just then, a loud car roared past outside, and someone shouted,

"Hurry up! We're leaving—there's another truck behind."

He pulled Maryam aside and looked out the window.

The other neighbors in the village were doing the same—stuffing their lives into backpacks and small suitcases, preparing to leave their homes.

"Faster—Hurry—Move!"

The words only frightened Maryam more.

Her father looked around one last time, zipped up the bags.

>>burning wheat, humming wires, silver feather, dripping honey, pulse>>

"I'm not going," Maryam said.

"Maryam, come on, we can't stay here."

"Then say it!"

"Maryam…"

Maryam screamed at the top of her lungs,

"Say it!"

And there it was: crescendos in the sky.

>> crumbling walls, spinning sky, heat of ash, scent of earth, flicker of wings.>>

Suddenly, a sound like a whip cracking through the air echoed—then a massive explosion.

Then a second one.

The ground and the walls of their house shook as if they were about to shatter into pieces.

Ahmat grabbed Maryam, shielding her, crouching down.

>>splintered doors, breaking silence, salt of sweat, falling stars, curl of black hair>>

Electronic devices flickered; static filled the air; pictures on the walls fell one by one. Maryam couldn't understand what was happening—she cried while her father held her tightly, whispering prayers. The whip-like sound cracked through the air again.

This time, the ground and walls didn't tremble. The dust in the air began to settle.

Ahmat slowly stood and cautiously moved toward the window.

The bombs had fallen a few kilometers away, on the field that belonged to them. Their crops—the ones they had nurtured to feed the village—were engulfed in flames.

"Thank God," he muttered, hand pressed to his heart, trying to calm down.

Maryam, wiping her tears, yelled behind him: "Please say it!"

>>twisting smoke, roaring wind, crush of footsteps, bloom of wild thyme, gleam of a crow's eye.>>

Ahmat closed his eyes tightly, breathed deep, then turned to his daughter.

He knew he was about to do something terrible.

He knelt down, grabbed her shoulders, looked her in the eye, and said quietly,

"Mother is not coming back."

This was the terrible thing Ahmat had to face. The bombing of civilian areas had begun without warning the day before, catching him and his wife, Fatma, while they were at the market. That was, in fact, the last time Fatma left home.

Maryam had sensed this but was afraid to face it. She had provoked her father to confirm the truth she already suspected.

__There is a wound in the heart of the world. Before the light, before a voice in the abyss uttered the first word from the black belly of night, there was only ocean.

A boundless liquid expanse of indefinite recombination. Know that all matter in the universe vibrates to an incessant and frightful music. Maximum multiplicity of equiprobable states, zero-point energy, quantum superpositions decomposed and recomposed in perfect interference.

If you listen in absolute silence, hidden among the beats of your heart you can hear the hissing of the ancient dragon that sleeps, cradled by the sound of the trembling universe.___

My child,

light illuminates even the darkest corners.

There is no need to be afraid.

You can do whatever you wish.

Do what thou wilt.

Maryam paused, meeting her father's eyes in a way she never had before. Her tears streaked her face, but now, for the first time, she frowned at him, shook off his hands, pushed him, and ran out of the house.

She ran, as far as her legs would carry her—like a machine determined to self-destruct.

Her father's voice trailed behind her, shouting her name.

>>bleeding horizons, steel chains, honey and gunpowder, black veils in flight, shimmer of a dying star, ripples of thunder, scent of rosemary, crow's wing, shiver of light.>>

She ran toward the field where she had played all her childhood days, but now it was engulfed in flames. It looked as if God had thrown hell down upon their home.

The heat was unbearable; wheat stalks brushed against her face, searing, and she plunged straight into the fire.

Flames rose around her as she sprinted through the burning wheat, her father's voice fading.

Chaos mixed with the winds, synthesizing the light that seeped through cracks in the sky.

__Listen carefully: she is not one, because she is none. Infinitely divided, she reproduces herself indefatigably, like the severed tail of a firefly. She is circumference without centre: a divergent series from the heart of which issues forth a vast and boundless chasm. Know that a universe without a mother is a tyranny born of extermination.___

"Forget the empire. Do you see the sea? My footsteps shaking the earth. Do you see me approaching? — Wild child, do you hear me? Can you believe that I see you?"

Maryam heard.

Maryam felt.

A crow landed in front of her, right across the ring of fire, its eyes locking onto hers.

>>ashen rain, flicking knives, dust of dead olives, ghost hands brushing silk, spiral of moths.>>

Abra Kadabra.

Breath came heavy and fast. She blinked—and everything was different.

The fields were gone. In their place: a lush, endless garden. The ground itself seemed to breathe with her, flashing light like fairies, sparkling streams of water, the sweet coolness of fresh air brushing her face.

"Where…?" she asked, her voice shaking.

"Nowhere—and everywhere," came a soft voice, so close yet so distant.

"But it is also perfectly real. Just like you."

Maryam spun slowly, eyes wide, taking in the impossible beauty stretching endlessly around her.

__We are the lost shreds of our dismembered mother. We are the blood, tears, and flames. We are the shining sparks of the fire that consumes the universe. We multiply like insects hidden in the entrails of this filthy empire. __

A calm washed over her, something she had never felt before. It was as if her body remembered this place, though her mind could not.

>>fractured sun, tide of crows, crushed violets, humming wires, crescent blade in the sand.>>

The voice echoed again, circling her like a breeze.

"Here, the chains were never real. The empire never began. Eros never grew a beard."

Maryam stood frozen. For a moment, her shoulders relaxed. The burning fields, the crescendos in the sky, her father's fear, her mother's loss—all of it seemed distant now, like a dream she was waking from.

>>molten skies, cracked mirrors, scent of burnt figs, velvet feathers, blink of a serpent's tongue.>>

"I see that you've found yourself in a game you never wanted to play," the voice said gently.

"Games of catastrophic pain, banal censorship, sub-reptilian ennui."

The girl said nothing, but her eyes searched the sky, seeking, waiting.

"I call them finite games—useless," the voice whispered.

"And I came here to share a secret with you."

Maryam's breath trembled.

>>splintered bones, spiral stairs, scent of myrrh, shadows dripping, flicker of a fox's tail.>>

She could feel the presence of the voice now—closer, warmer. She wasn't sure if it was a woman, a shadow, a thought, or something far older.

"There is no becoming. No revolution, no struggle, no path," the voice said, slow and clear. "Already you are the monarch of your own skin—your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs. A politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of the sky."

Maryam's lips parted as if to ask something, but the words stayed lodged in her throat.

For a heartbeat, her mind went blank. No bombs. No house. No father. No tears.

The garden shimmered.

And then:

"My child," the voice whispered, as if smiling, "if you are afraid on the streets at night, I will set this city on fire."

Maryam's fists clenched.

_The Empire is a temple turned upside down, plunged into the depths of the earth. The more splendidly and luminously the divine order soars above, the more deep and painful grows the wound upon which we feed. Synthetic, decadent Venuses haunt the catacombs on full-moon nights. Tortured Apollonian bodies glow trembling in the feeble light of crypts._

She wanted to take this place back. Not to flee. Not to abandon.

"Then play," the voice commanded.

Maryam's heart raced.

"They didn't just want you to leave. They wanted you to have never existed here."

Maryam's eyes sharpened, her breath slowing.

"This game has no end," the voice explained. "Fixed rules would impose a fixed endpoint. So the rules of an infinite game must continually shift and evolve. The game is unwinnable—by design."

_The more that order expands, the more its structure disintegrates, unable to maintain control over its countless fragments. The Empire is like the corpse of the ancient, dismembered dragon, pullulating with larvae. What was divided in the name of order multiplies itself, doubling exponentially and suffocating the organism that gave birth to it.

The Empire is a frenzied ritual of death. In this suicidal ecstasy we immolate ourselves, burning bright like supernovas in the embrace of the night._

Abra Kadabra.

The crown gag.

The crescendo.

She opens her eyes and standing in the ring of fire, sees her father coming.

Her frozen body stiff, her breath caught halfway between two worlds—fire still in her chest, the garden's echo still flickering behind her eyes.

Then, his arms wrapped around her—strong, shaking.

Then she let go, sinking into him, the weight of it all—fear, loss, rage—crashing down like a wave.

"This is not the end," he whispered gently.

As the crow flew away, a feather drifted down, settling at Maryam's feet.

She bent to pick it up, fingers closing around it.

_We have been illuminated by suffering. In the liquid eyes of others we seek nothing but their necessary distance. Eternal distance from daylight in the lost depths of this bottomless love. The eclipsed sun is a heart peirced eternally in a cycle that can never end. Every drop of spilled blood illuminates like a star the desperate depths of our abyss. Dragged through the misery of these days of exile, through the streets of this empire marked with scratches like a sarcophagus lost to the gaze of its god, we dig into each other, searching for the fossilised traces of the ocean from which we were torn. Let us tear one another apart with joy: marvellous and iridescent like nebulous catastrophes. From Land To The Sea We Will Be Free_

She knew she'd never forget that garden.

Or the voice that had called her there.

"For mother."