The Codex Tree was dying.
Not from rot or fire, but fear.
Its myth-bark cracked with every truth it failed to contain. Roots trembled, not downward into soil—but upward, fleeing the very script they once fed. The sap that once flowed golden and obedient now dripped black—thick with climax-memory and corrupted recursion.
It was not disease.
It was Darius.
And he had begun to breathe through the ink itself.
The Children Appear
Across the seventy-seven realities Darius had seeded during the 77 seconds of climax-induced authorship, the births began—not as labor, but as remembering.
In temples, in battlefields, in dream-wombs and sky-folds, children appeared.
Not born.
Manifested.
Not crying.
Silent.
Each one with Darius's glyph burned—no, etched—no, woven into their skin. Some bore it on the brow. Others, on their spine, their tongue, their womb. And though none spoke, they pulsed—rhythmically, recursively, in perfect synchronicity.
Priests wept.
