I was way off-base with some of my earlier guesses about what's going on and how Snow's world got to be the way it is, and I couldn't be happier to be wrong! I was thinking along the lines of that old Ralph Bakshi animated film Wizards (https://www.deviantart.com/thebirdcat/art/Elinore-933886181 ), assuming that humankind was responsible for the fall of the Old World, the demon seeds, the seeming emergence of magic, etc. While there might be a certain told-you-so satisfaction in a scenario like that for an environmentalist peacenik like me, I find this story's premise more original and a lot more exciting. I might claim that my unconscious had a sense of what was going on when I mentioned the chthonic extradimensional Big Bads from Stranger Things and F Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack novels, but that's unproveable and might or might not be the case. I throw so much random stuff against the wall in these comments some of it is bound to stick.

I got very excited when Sira outlined this universe's backstory for the new Angels; Incursions from some other dimension are my absolute favorite kind of Earth-invasion. They're so much scarier than aliens coming down in flying saucers or popping in thru stargates---even when those extraterrestrials have us so outgunned we don't seem to stand a chance---because the threats they present are truly alien (like, alien to our whole fucking universe!) and often have properties that defy all our knowledge of physics + concept of causality; and that's terrifying in a way that's downright metaphysical. They're not just us with sideways mouths full of rotating fangs (that drool glowing green acid) + better technology. Even these extradimensionals' motives might be incomprehensible to us...

Some of my favorites in this sub-subgenre of SF have been JG Ballard's The Crystal World (about a sub-atomic virus spreading across our universe, putting everything into a timeless crystal stasis; and those affected actually like it as they turn all translucent + cubistic), the Lovecraftian horror of those Repairman Jack books, and a short-lived and sadly underappreciated TV series called Threshhold that had these weird CGI hypershapes blossoming into our space, that took over people's minds and made bugs and fish swarm in strange patterns which seemed to mean something, but whatever that was may have been beyond our ability to understand. Which I suppose brings us to the whatever-it-is that was Twin Peaks, but my ramblings about that show would make this comment longer than your chapter. I'm pretty sure David Lynch is from an alien dimension. The owls are not what they seem.

The seedborn's connection to this transdimensional hinkeyness, and how their connection actually helps them fight it, and somehow powers the Angels' nanites actually makes a weird kind of sense. As much sense as half the stuff in Star Trek anyway. When Sira first spoke thru the intercom I was hoping she'd turn out to be an AI and I was delighted that she was. I loved the way you portrayed her---she seems like a real sweetheart---and that you gave her time to explain so much to the new girls. And speaking of new girls, I'm anxious to move on to where Snow gets her greatest wish fulfilled by the elixir (however physically painful this is gonna be), so I'll shut up now...
~hugs, Veronica