Ascension

I. The Abyss I was born beneath the weight of water, where the world was nothing but silence and salt. The deep curled its fingers around my ribs, tightened like a clenched fist, unyielding. Whales whispered through the void, their voices like distant thunder, telling of a sun I had never touched, a sky I could not fathom. But the ocean does not love its children. It keeps them. It sinks them. It forgets them. II. The Fracture Above, the ceiling of the world trembled, a trembling sheet of hammered glass. Then— a wound of light. A raw, golden gash torn through the dark, spilling fire into the abyss. The current shuddered. The deep exhaled. Something inside me broke. I kicked against the drowning hush, against the weight of centuries, against the silence that had made a home in my lungs. The water clawed at my skin, snarling, dragging, screaming— but I rose. I rose. III. The Breach Then— the shattering. I tore through the sea like a blade through glass, ripped from the deep in a cascade of silver and defiance, flung into a sky so vast it made me tremble. Water crashed from my limbs like falling stars, returning to the world that had tried to keep me. But I was no longer its prisoner. The wind seized my breath and made it its own. The sun carved me in gold and fire. I was no longer of the sea. I was the ember of a drowned sun. I was the echo of forgotten storms. I was the horizon unchained. And I would never fall again. 27 February 2025