Eden: The Age of Becoming

They thought it was over.

The systems had stabilized. The fractures had stopped spreading. The world, for the first time in months, felt steady again.

People called it recovery.

They called it progress.

They called it a return to normal.

They were wrong.

Because nothing had been fixed.

It had only moved forward.

The children were the first to show it.

They didn't react the way others did. They didn't question the changes or fear them. They adapted-quietly, naturally, as if they had always been part of something larger.

And maybe they had.

What came next wasn't a failure of the system.

It was the next stage of it.

Not something breaking.

Something becoming.