Location:Seven Peaks; Imperial City; Federation Border; Worldwide
Date/Time:TC1853.12.17 (Dawn to Midday)
The pulses stopped at dawn.
Not gradually — not a final compression from minutes to seconds to nothing. They simply ceased. One moment, the formation network was registering spikes every forty minutes, each one rattling the diagnostic crystals and sending brief surges through the ley line junctions. Then silence. Complete, absolute, wrong.
Marcus was in the technomagic workshop when it happened. He looked up from the relay communicator, he was running through its fifth diagnostic cycle, and felt the absence like a held breath. The monitoring array showed flatline readings. Not depleted — holding. As if the entire spiritual energy system of the planet had drawn inward, gathering itself.
He was running before the thought finished forming.
