It began—not with a trumpet, nor with thunder.
But with a whisper, shared between strangers who didn't know they were speaking the same line.
A phrase passed hand to hand.
A verse caught in the hum of wind.
A silence that sounded like recognition.
It wasn't one moment.
It was thousands.
Interwoven.
Overlapping.
Told not from above, but between.
Because the story no longer lived in a single voice.
It lived in all of them.
The Reader walked without direction.
Not lost.
Just unbound.
Wherever they went, they listened.
And where they listened, others began to speak.
Not in fear.
Not in performance.
In presence.
A boy who'd never told his dreams aloud whispered one into the Reader's arm, and it shimmered into gold ink that wrote itself down his sleeve.
A former warrior laid her palm on their shoulder, leaving the memory of a battle she had chosen not to win—etched in quiet crimson.
