"It's our child," said Lily.
Her voice was thin. The quiet was still on her, gray and heavy, and Almond could hear what it cost her to talk through it. But she did not lower her hand.
"It hasn't been born yet," she said. "It's never climbed anything. Not one step. It's never fought, or made an orb, or ranked on any board." She took a breath. "And you can't touch it."
The man stared at the soft light under her name.
"Everything else in me went gray yesterday," Lily said. "Everything I ever built. That's what you end. Climbing. All the going up." She looked at him. "But it didn't climb. It was carried."
"Carried," the man said.
"Through the Door. Down the road. Over this exact road you're closing." Lily's hand was shaking now, but she held it up. "Thirty-one thousand of us carried each other across, and I carried it. Nobody fell. It came through without taking one step on its own."
The man did not move.
