I. The Vertical Cut — Instantiation

The Stone That Narrowed the Sky

Liora stood beneath a sky woven of possibilities.

Above her hung a lattice of faintly glowing threads, crossing and recrossing in silent architecture. None compelled. None selected. Each shimmered with equal invitation.

She lifted a small stone from the ground.

The moment her fingers closed around it, the sky narrowed.

Not because the sky had changed — but because the act had cut through it. What had been vast became specific. The shimmer gathered into a single line descending into her palm.

The stone did not represent the sky.

It was not a token of a higher thing.

It was a narrowing —

a path through the weave.

From below, one might say:

This stone is a token of that sky.

But from above, the sky would whisper:

This is how I become event.

Liora released the stone.

The sky widened again.

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The Sky That Bled Into Stone

Night had fallen across the lattice.

The sky above Liora was no longer woven of gentle threads but of taut, trembling filaments — stretched across an abyss without ground. Each line glowed faintly, vibrating with unrealised descent.

Nothing had yet fallen.

Liora lifted her hand.

When her fingers closed around a single filament, the sky screamed silently. The infinite weave contracted along one trembling path and tore downward.

A single event struck the earth.

Where the filament touched ground, stone formed — sharp-edged, irrevocable. The rest of the sky recoiled, not diminished, but now altered in tension.

From below, one might say:

This stone is a token of the sky.

But the sky would answer:

No. I narrowed. And in narrowing, I changed.

Liora looked upward.

The lattice was still vast.

But it would never again be untouched.