Morning arrived over the Balance Branch with none of the strangeness the previous mornings had carried.
The First Road remained exactly as it had been. The Second Crossing still branched away from it into a horizon that refused to resolve into anything measurable, and the distant figures Sarya had glimpsed at its edge remained where they had been, unmoved through the night. The Answer stood at the junction between the two paths, patient as it had always been.
But something in the Branch itself had changed.
