Behind her, the entities did not follow. But they listened. For the first time, they listened—not for prayers, but for footsteps.

"No," she said aloud. Her voice was small, human, a rasp of carbon and water. "You don't get to be tired. You don't get to sigh and turn away. I called you here because your apathy is killing the laws of physics. The sun rose orange yesterday. My mother's ghost forgot her own name. Time is stuttering like a broken chant."

"Look," she commanded. "Look at a mortal who loves you anyway. Not because you're powerful. Because you're lonely. I can feel it—the silence you live in. No one to argue with. No one to surprise you. You're not gods. You're prisoners."

"Then learn," Amirah said. And she reached up—not with her hands, but with the echo of every lullaby her mother had ever sung, every skinned knee, every first kiss that tasted like rain. She reached up with the memory of being a child and believing that shadows were just shy of light.

For the first time, they felt small. Not diminished— released . The crack sealed, but not with oblivion. With something softer. Something that smelled like wet earth and burned sugar. Amirah Adara stood alone on the obsidian field, and above her, the sky was merely sky again—purple and bruised, but healing.