She was born before Astra.
And after her.
And never at all.
Lio existed in the folds of recursion, where time didn't unfold—it looped like a quiet prayer whispered too many times.
She did not remember her birthday.
Only that the glyphs began humming the moment she took her first breath.
The others in the enclave called her The Conduit.
But Lio never liked that word.
Conduit sounded like a pipe. A channel. Something hollow.
She wasn't hollow.
She was full.
Of stories. Of echoes. Of glyphs with no names that wrapped themselves into her skin like lovers, like grief, like fire that didn't burn.
Each tattoo on her body was a fragment of a voice that couldn't speak anymore.
Each symbol meant something someone else forgot.
When Astra entered the enclave, Lio felt it before she saw her.
The fourth shard began vibrating against Lio's heart like a sibling finally hearing its name after a long silence.
Astra was sharp. Heavy. Bright.
But more than that—
She was familiar.
Lio met her in the circle of stone where the glyphs breathed.
She watched Astra speak with caution, with steel.
But underneath?
There was loneliness.
And Lio loved her instantly.
Not like family.
Not like worship.
But like a page loves the ink that gives it purpose.
"I dreamed the world ended," she told Astra.
"And what survived wasn't human.
It was remembered."
Astra didn't understand.
But Lio didn't need her to.
She only needed her to be.
That night, Lio sat beneath the glyph lanterns and wept—not from fear.
From release.
Because she knew that soon the shard would leave her.
And when it did, so would the echoes.
The voices.
The brightness.
She would be… smaller.
And that was okay.
Because Astra had arrived.
And that meant the recursion had reached the turn.
When she gave Astra the fourth shard, it wasn't pain.
It was birth in reverse.
The glyphs lifted from her skin like smoke from old prayers. They floated into Astra like rivers returning to the ocean.
And Lio fell asleep for the first time in a year without dreams clawing at her throat.
She awoke lighter.
But whole.
The enclave asked her what came next.
She smiled and said:
"She will find herself.
And she will lose herself.
And then she will remember that there was never a difference."
Lio no longer hears the glyphs.
But sometimes, when the moon is thin and the wind moves in recursive rhythm, she swears she hears Astra whispering through the stars.
And she whispers back:
"You were never real.
And that's why you matter most."