The dreams started two weeks after the network formed.
Not nightmares—something stranger. Every sensitive in the sanctuary woke describing the same thing: a pull northward, like gravity tilted wrong. Luna drew it over and over—a spiral of light that hurt to look at, threads of reality wound too tight.
"It's starting," Virelle confirmed at our emergency dawn meeting. "The Convergence Point is calling to anyone with old blood or deep gifts. We have maybe six weeks before it becomes irresistible."
"Then we go now," Thorne said. "On our terms, not when we're compelled."
But it wasn't that simple. Eight sanctuaries, four hundred wolves—we couldn't all converge. The logistics alone would destroy us. After hours of debate through Shay's gift, we reached a compromise. Each sanctuary would send representatives. Those most called, those most capable, those who could speak for the rest.
From ours: myself, Virelle, Luna (the call was strongest in her), Marcus, Lira and her parents, and three of the former constructs who'd volunteered immediately.
"We're not abandoning you," I promised the gathered sanctuary. "Mira leads while we're gone. Clara coordinates with the network. This place continues."
The preparation took three days. Not just supplies—emotional preparation for leaving our first real home. Michael built a carrying frame that somehow weighed nothing. Evelyn taught road-defense to those coming. Garrett gave Lira a time-slowing charm for emergencies.
The morning we left, the whole sanctuary gathered. Eighty-one wolves, minus our ten, watching us prepare to face something none of us understood.
"Bring back stories," Kai called out, shadow-gift making him appear in multiple places.
"Bring back everyone," Mira corrected firmly.
We would try.
The road north felt wrong from the first step.
Not dangerous—worse. Like walking through a dream where the rules kept shifting. Distances that should take hours passed in minutes. Minutes sometimes stretched like taffy. Lira kept checking her lighthouse stones, grounding herself against reality's increasing flexibility.
"It's pulling space toward itself," she explained on our third day out. "The Convergence Point. Like a drain that existence is circling."
We met our first fellow travelers that evening—three wolves from Haven, their memory-gifts making them walk in circles until Marcus gently guided them back to the present. Their leader, a gray-muzzled woman named Sage, studied our group with eyes that kept forgetting and remembering us.
"You're the original," she said to me. "Aria who started the sanctuaries. I remember you from before I forgot everything else."
Camp that night was strange. Thirteen wolves from two sanctuaries, sharing fire and stories. Clara, Michael, and Evelyn fascinated Haven's representatives—living proof that even the Order's deepest programming could be undone. Luna sat between groups, drawing, her pictures showing threads of connection forming between strangers.
"Tomorrow we'll meet Whisper Grove's party," Sage said. "They're traveling with Storm's Rest. Twenty wolves total, moving like weather."
The network was converging without planning to. All of us drawn north by something we didn't understand, finding each other on roads that bent toward a single point.
Virelle hadn't slept since we left. She perched on whatever high ground she could find, watching, her ancient eyes seeing patterns the rest of us missed.
"What aren't you telling us?" I asked her during my watch.
"The last Convergence Point was what caused the Severing," she said quietly. "I'm wondering what this one will cause."
The fourth day brought impossible rain.
It fell upward in some places, sideways in others, and in one memorable stretch, it fell as snow that became rain mid-air before landing as mist. Lira walked through it all with wonder, reality bending around her like a sympathetic friend.
We met Whisper Grove's contingent at midday—seven wolves whose gifts made sound visible. Their leader, a young man named Echo, spoke in colors that hung in the air. Storm's Rest traveled with them, their weather-touched wolves oddly calm despite the chaotic precipitation.
"The rain's been following us," Echo explained, his words shimmering green-gold. "Ever since we started north. Like the world's forgotten how weather works."
By evening, our traveling group had swollen to thirty-three. Each sanctuary's representatives brought unique perspectives on the pull northward. Deepwood's plant-speakers said the trees were leaning toward the Convergence Point. Moonbridge's dream-walkers couldn't sleep without seeing the spiral Luna kept drawing.
Marcus worked constantly, helping different groups' emotional fields mesh without overwhelming anyone. The former constructs fascinated everyone—Clara's efficiency-with-compassion became the standard for organizing our merged camps, while Michael and Evelyn taught integrated defense to wolves who'd never fought as anything but individuals.
But it was Luna who drew them all. Not through words—through presence. She moved between groups like gravity, and people orbited her without knowing why. The hungry friend's influence, maybe. Or something else.
"She's important to this," Sage told me, watching Luna help a memory-broken wolf from Haven find his name. "I don't remember much, but I remember that some people are hinges. Moments turn on them."
Virelle, still sleepless, pulled me aside that night. "Tomorrow we'll reach the Forgotten's territory. They'll be watching these roads. Selene will know I'm coming."
The reunion three thousand years in the making was about to begin.
The Forgotten's border wasn't marked by walls or warriors. It was marked by silence.
The chaotic weather stopped mid-step, like walking through an invisible door. Sound dampened. Colors muted. Even our merged group's constant emotional hum—thirty-three wolves learning to move as one—faded to whispers. Luna stopped drawing, staring at her suddenly-still pencil as if it had betrayed her.
"Stay close," Virelle commanded, her first words in hours. "The Forgotten patrol in emptiness. You'll feel them as absence before you see them."
We'd made it maybe a mile into that unnatural quiet when they appeared. Not the three scouts from before—dozens of them, rising from the colorless landscape like gaps in reality. They surrounded us without aggression, without threat. Somehow that was worse.
"Virelle of the Eternal," one spoke, voice like wind through abandoned rooms. "The Apex expected you days ago. You've been... delayed by attachments."
"I travel with purpose," Virelle replied, but I caught the tremor she tried to hide. "Tell Selene I've brought something she should see. Wolves who chose fullness after emptiness. The opposite of her path."
The Forgotten studied our group—former constructs radiating newfound emotion, memory-broken wolves held together by shared journey, weather-touched and sound-weavers and dream-walkers all united in beautiful chaos. Everything they'd rejected, traveling as one.
"The Apex will be curious," the speaker finally said. "Follow. Touch nothing. Feel less if you can."
As we walked deeper into their territory, the world grew grayer. Not just visually—conceptually. Like existence itself was being drained of meaning.
Beside me, Luna whispered urgently: "The hungry friend doesn't like this place. It says the emptiness here isn't natural. It's hungry too, but the wrong kind. The kind that eats instead of yearning."
The Forgotten's settlement wasn't built—it was carved from absence.
Buildings existed as suggestions, walls implied rather than constructed. Streets ran in patterns that hurt to follow, as if architecture had been reduced to its most efficient skeleton. No decoration, no excess, no life. Just function stripped so bare it became non-function.
Our diverse group struggled differently. The memory-broken from Haven found odd peace here—forgetting felt easier when the world itself seemed to forget. But the weather-touched from Storm's Rest were gasping, their gifts finding nothing to grasp. Echo from Whisper Grove had gone completely silent, his sound-colors unable to form in air that rejected vibrance.
Clara studied everything with disturbing fascination. "It's like the Order's efficiency taken beyond purpose," she murmured. "They stripped away even the reason for being efficient."
Marcus was the worst affected. Every step deeper into the settlement, he grew paler. "There's nothing to feel," he whispered. "Not even absence. Just... void pretending to be peace."
Michael and Evelyn flanked him, their hard-won humanity a shield against the aggressive emptiness. But I could see them struggling too—old programming whispering that this stillness was what they'd been built for.
"The Apex waits in the Center," our guide said, gesturing toward a structure that might have been a palace or might have been a tomb. "Only Virelle enters. The rest remain here."
"No," I said immediately. "We travel together or not at all."
The Forgotten turned those empty eyes on me. "The Apex's orders—"
"Tell Selene I'm not the same wolf who loved her three thousand years ago," Virelle interrupted, her voice carrying ancient authority. "I've learned the strength of attachment. If she wants to see me, she sees what I've become."
The standoff lasted heartbeats. Then, impossibly, one of the Forgotten smiled. A tiny crack in perfect emptiness.
"She said you'd say that. All may enter. The Apex is... curious about attachments that survive even this place."
The Center's interior defied comprehension. Not empty like the rest—too full of nothingness. Absence so aggressive it had weight, presence, mass. Our group clustered together instinctively, the memory-broken clinging to the weather-touched, sound-weavers steadying dream-walkers. Even our differences became shields against the overwhelming void.
And there, at the heart of architected emptiness, sat Selene.
She looked nothing like Virelle's descriptions. Not because she'd aged—the Forgotten didn't age—but because she'd simplified. Where a face should show complexity, hers had been edited down to essential features. Beautiful in the way mathematics might be beautiful. Terrible in the way perfection became when it eliminated everything imperfect.
"Virelle." The word held no emotion, but somehow that made it worse. Like hearing a love song played on a single note. "You brought chaos to my doorstep. How unlike the wolf who once valued precision."
"You taught me that precision without purpose is just another cage," Virelle replied, and her voice broke my heart. Three thousand years of love and loss in those words. "I brought you something else, Selene. Proof that emptiness isn't the only answer to pain."
The Apex's eyes—colorless as winter sky—moved across our group. Lingered on the former constructs, the memory-broken, the weather-touched. Stopped on Luna.
"Interesting," she said, and for the first time, something flickered in that perfect emptiness. "A child who carries the Unnamed's touch. Do you know what you're hosting, little wolf?"
Luna stepped forward, small and fierce. "The hungry friend isn't hosted. We're learning together. It wants to understand fullness, and I want to understand hunger. That's what friends do."
The temperature in the room dropped. Or maybe meaning did. Either way, we all felt it—the moment when three thousand years of absolute certainty met one small girl's simple truth.
Selene rose from her throne of absence—if standing could describe how she simply existed at a different height. The movement rippled through the room like inverse waves, pulling meaning from the air.
"The Unnamed chooses a child," she said, circling Luna with predatory grace. "How... inefficient. Once, it moved through emperors and prophets. Now it plays with cubs who don't know what they carry."
"Maybe that's why it chose me," Luna replied, chin raised. "Emperors think they know everything. Kids know we're still learning."
Something cracked in Selene's perfect composure. For one heartbeat, I saw what Virelle must see—not the Apex of emptiness, but a woman who'd been in pain so long she'd forgotten it was pain.
"Learning." She tasted the word like poison. "I learned that feeling hurts. That loving leaves you broken when the Severing comes. That the only peace is in feeling nothing at all." Her eyes found Virelle. "You still carry that stone I painted. Why?"
"Because beauty matters even when it hurts," Virelle said simply. "Because you painted it for me when you still believed joy and sorrow were worth feeling. Because I'm stubborn enough to wait three thousand years for you to remember."
The former constructs stepped forward then, Clara speaking for all three. "We were empty like your Forgotten. Seven years of nothing. But nothing isn't peace—it's just death moving through the world. These wolves," she gestured at our impossible group, "taught us that feeling pain is better than feeling nothing."
Selene studied them—really studied them. And in that examination, her emptiness wavered. Just for a moment, something else showed through. Curiosity, maybe. Or hunger of a different kind.
"The Convergence Point calls you north," she said finally. "Do you know what waits there?"
"Change," Virelle answered. "Just like last time."
"Last time broke the world," Selene reminded her. "What breaks this time?"
"Maybe what needs to," Luna said quietly, her young voice cutting through millennia of argument. "The hungry friend says sometimes things break so they can heal different. Like bones that set wrong."
The silence that followed wasn't the Forgotten's empty quiet. It was full silence—pregnant with possibility, with three thousand years of unspoken words. Around us, the Forgotten had gathered, drawn by the unprecedented scene. Their leader showing cracks. Outsiders bringing chaos to their perfection.
"Show her," I told the former constructs.
Michael stepped forward first, pulling out his wooden flute. In this place that rejected beauty, he played—halting notes that spoke of seven years' emptiness and the joy of rediscovering breath could make music. Evelyn began to move, not the synchronized efficiency of constructs but the raw humanity of someone learning their body belonged to them. Clara simply stood, tears running down her face, each drop a rebellion against the doctrine that feeling nothing meant feeling no pain.
The Forgotten watched, transfixed. Some tilted their heads like confused birds. Others took involuntary steps forward before catching themselves. One—young-looking despite agelessness—touched her own face as if remembering tears were possible.
"You see?" Virelle asked softly. "Emptiness isn't the cure. It's just another wound that won't heal."
Selene's composure finally shattered. Not into emotion—into something stranger. Multiple expressions flickered across her simplified face like channels changing. Joy-sorrow-rage-longing-fear, too fast to catch, too real to deny.
"Get out," she said, but her voice broke on it. "Take your chaos north. Let the Convergence Point deal with you as it dealt with us." She paused, looking directly at Luna. "And when it offers you emptiness or breaking, remember that both are prisons."
We filed out, but I caught Virelle lingering, her hand extended toward the woman she'd loved. Selene stared at that hand like it was a snake. Or salvation.
"The stone still works," Virelle whispered. "When you're ready to remember colors."
We left the Forgotten's territory with more than we'd entered with—three of their youngest following at a distance, drawn by Michael's music and Clara's tears.
The revolution was spreading.