---
Sofia did not begin with Sekhmet. She did not begin with herself either. She began with the past.
Her gaze remained on him, but her voice shifted somewhere older, somewhere far above prison-stone and bat wings and the rough dark floor of the Void Land. It became the kind of voice used when memory stopped belonging to one person and became something carried by a race.
"There was a gathering once," she said, "far above this place. Not in the lower territories. Not in the middle ones. In the upper reaches of Null, where the older bloodlines and the stronger remnants still hid what they could not protect openly."
Natasha remained silent beside her.
Bat Bat, for once, did not interrupt.
Even the bats on the rock ledges held still.
Sofia continued.
"It was not a proud meeting. It was not the kind where banners flew and kings announced themselves. It was a hidden one. A fearful one. A meeting of survivors."
Her eyes darkened slightly.
