The seventh power part 2 -Before the beginning

THE SEVENTH POWER

PART TWO

THE WORLD THAT CHOSE

The Choice was only the beginning.

CHAPTER ONE

AFTER THE CHOICE

The first thing Mira noticed was the silence.

Not ordinary silence. The forest had never truly been quiet. There had always been

birds somewhere in the branches, insects beneath the grass, leaves whispering

whenever the wind passed through them.

This silence was different.

It felt deliberate.

Mira stood at the edge of the forest and looked toward the distant mountains.

Morning had washed the world in pale gold. The mountains were still there. The

river still curled around the valley.

The world had survived.

It had chosen.

For the first time since everything had begun, Mira let her shoulders fall.

“So that's it?” Aria asked behind her.

Mira turned. Aria was sitting on the old stone wall, tired but smiling.

“That's it,” Mira said.

Aria raised an eyebrow. “You sound disappointed.”

“I'm not disappointed. I'm just not used to things ending without immediately

becoming worse.”

The wolf-dog opened one eye.

Aria pointed at it. “Even he thinks you're being dramatic.”

Mira smiled.

For a moment, everything was normal.

Then the wolf-dog stood.

Its ears lifted. Its entire body became still.

Mira's smile disappeared.

“What is it?”The wolf-dog stared down the path.

There, in the middle of the road, something blue was growing.

A single flower.

Mira's blood went cold.

She knew that flower.

She had created it.

Her Seventh Symbol began to glow.

Then every bird in the forest stopped singing.

A voice whispered beneath the earth.

“You gave the world its choice.”

Mira looked around.

“Who are you?”

“Now it is time to give yourself yours.”