Awaken -

She sat up, her joints clicking like cooling metal. Around her lay a graveyard of clockwork birds, their brass wings frozen in mid-flight. She reached out, touching the cold metal of a hawk.

"System check," she whispered. Her voice sounded like grinding stones. awaken

"Integrity at forty percent," a pulse in her mind replied. "Memory drive: Corrupted. Primary objective: Reach the Spire." She sat up, her joints clicking like cooling metal

The command wasn't a voice. It was a line of code executing in a space that had no business being digital. Elara opened eyes she didn’t remember owning. Above her, a sky the color of a bruised plum hummed with the sound of a billion bees. She sat up