The question, returned, hung in the space between them, no longer an inquiry but a mirror.
It reflected not just their own nascent identities but the very nature of the story they now inhabited.
Lyra, the Weaver of Narratives, was the first to speak, her voice a thread of golden light in the quiet dark.
’We are the story,’ she whispered, and the words themselves seemed to shimmer with the weight of their new truth.