The silence that followed the shattering of the Altar of the Unborn was not the hollow, terrifying vacuum of the Void. It was the heavy, pregnant silence of a world holding its breath, waiting to see if it was permitted to keep spinning.
I stood in the center of the bone-valley, my bare feet resting on the blackened basalt that had once been the seat of the Sisters' power. The grey salt-dust, which had once felt like a shroud of death, was now swirling in the air like iridescent snow, catching the first true, untainted rays of a golden-red sun. Where the dust touched the ground, the impossible happened: tiny, blood-red sprouts pushed through the ash, blooming into flowers with petals that shimmered like liquid rubies.
The Grey Erase was over. The Sanguine Age had begun.
