Chapter 3698: The Two Thousand Nine Hundred and Sixty-Seventh Echo: The Weight of Her Own Certainty

Lyra did not answer immediately. The question, so simple and direct, had bypassed all her defenses. It was not a challenge to be met with a counter-argument, nor a fact to be refuted with a story. It was an invitation.

It was an invitation to see the stone not as a symbol, but as a thing in itself, a silent witness to a history that predated any story.

For the first time in a very long time, Lyra felt the weight of her own certainty begin to crack.