The three young Forgotten caught up to us at dawn, exhausted from fighting their own emptiness to follow.
"We don't know your names," the first one said—the girl who'd touched her face when Clara cried. "We don't know our own names. But we remember... wanting to remember."
Marcus, despite his own exhaustion from the Forgotten settlement, immediately moved to help them. His empathy, so overwhelmed by absence before, now became a lifeline. "Start with what you feel right now," he guided gently. "Scared? Curious? Confused? All real. All yours."
We were thirty-six now. Our traveling group had become a rolling sanctuary, collecting the broken and curious as we moved north. The pull was stronger—Luna had stopped fighting it entirely, letting it guide her steps like a river's current. But something else was building too. The weather grew stranger. Reality bent without Lira's influence. And everyone's gifts seemed amplified, raw, harder to control.
"It's the proximity," Virelle explained as we broke camp. "Convergence Points don't just call—they intensify. Everything you are becomes more itself."
Echo's words were painting themselves in the air without him speaking. The weather-touched from Storm's Rest generated personal microbursts. Sage from Haven kept slipping between past and present, needing constant anchoring.
"How far?" I asked.
"Two days. Maybe less if reality keeps thinning." Virelle paused, watching the three former Forgotten trying to relearn individuality. "The Order will be there. Other groups we don't know. And at the center..."
"Change," Luna finished, her drawings now moving on the paper without her hand touching pencil. "The hungry friend says the last Convergence broke connections. This one might build them. Or break something else entirely."
By nightfall, the world had gone thoroughly strange.
We camped beside a lake that reflected tomorrow's sky. Several wolves saw themselves in the water—older, scarred, changed in ways that made them step back sharply. The three former Forgotten huddled together, overwhelmed by sensation after centuries of numbness. One kept touching grass, crying at its simple existence.
"Names," Marcus suggested to them gently. "Choose something that feels true now. You can always change it later."
They debated in whispers before deciding: River (for the tears she'd learned to cry), Branch (for growing in unexpected directions), and Near (for choosing proximity over distance).
Luna hadn't stopped drawing in hours. Her pictures covered every available surface—spirals within spirals, all paths leading to a single point. The hungry friend's anticipation bled through her gift, making everyone restless. Even Virelle paced, unable to maintain her usual stillness.
"Tomorrow we'll meet the Order's forces," Thorne said during evening strategy. "They'll have efficiency, numbers, constructs. We have—"
"Each other," Evelyn interrupted. "We have what they cut away. Connection. Choice. The ability to change our minds and hearts."
The weather-touched from Storm's Rest were creating an atmospheric shield, keeping our emotional emanations contained. No point announcing our approach. But I wondered if it mattered. This felt larger than tactics—like pieces moving toward positions they'd always meant to occupy.
"When we reach the Convergence Point," I said, "we stay together. Whatever happens, whatever offers or threats come, we don't let it divide us."
Thirty-six voices agreed. Former constructs and memory-broken, weather-touched and dream-walkers, three who'd chosen feeling over forgetting, and one small girl who carried something ancient and hungry for understanding.
Tomorrow, everything would change.
The Order's forces appeared at dawn like a geometric proof.
Constructs in perfect formations—hundreds of them, moving with that terrible synchronized beauty. But worse were the ones who led them: wolves who'd chosen efficiency over humanity, their eyes calculating angles of attack with cold precision. At their head stood someone I recognized from old pack memories—Commander Vega, who'd once been Thorne's cousin before she'd decided emotion was inefficiency.
"Aria Thorne," she called across the morning mist. "You've collected quite the assembly of anomalies. The Order offers one chance: surrender the reality-swimmer and the Unnamed's host. Keep the rest of your broken toys if you must."
Beside me, Luna pressed closer while Lira's parents formed a protective wall. The three former Forgotten—River, Branch, and Near—stared at the constructs with recognition and revulsion. They knew what emptiness looked like when it wore purpose like armor.
"Counter-offer," I called back. "You let us pass. Some of your constructs might even follow, like these three did." I gestured to Clara, Michael, and Evelyn, who stood proud in their reclaimed humanity. "Efficiency doesn't have to mean emptiness."
Commander Vega's expression didn't change. "Emotional contamination speaking. Predictable. Constructs—formation seven. Minimize casualties where practical."
The synchronized army began to move, but something unexpected happened. Some of the constructs... hesitated. Microscopic delays in their perfect unity. They'd heard Michael's music drifting from our camp. Seen Clara's tears. Witnessed former constructs choosing connection over optimization.
"Now," Thorne whispered. "While they're imperfect."
But Luna stepped forward before we could act, the hungry friend's presence rippling out like dropped stones in still water. "You're afraid of feeling because feeling hurts," she said, her child's voice carrying impossibly far. "But being empty hurts too. Just differently. Quieter. Forever."
The formation wavered.
The hesitation spread through the construct ranks like cracks in ice.
Clara stepped forward, scanning the formation until she found what she was looking for. "Ninety-three," she called to a construct in the third row. "We shared a sleeping quarter for two years. You used to tap your fingers in patterns when you thought no one was watching. That's not efficiency—that's music trying to escape."
The construct's hand twitched. Then stilled. Then twitched again.
Michael joined her. "Forty-seven. You always took the night maintenance shifts. Said it was for efficiency, but I saw you watching stars through the windows. Stars aren't efficient. They're just beautiful."
One by one, our former constructs called to specific memories, specific individuals. The formation began to fragment—not into chaos, but into something more terrifying to the Order: individual choice.
Commander Vega's composure finally cracked. "Constructs! Override contamination. Execute formation seven NOW."
But formation seven required perfect synchronization. And perfection had left the field. Some constructs moved forward, others hesitated, a few actually stepped back. The geometric proof of their power collapsed into something messier, more human.
River, the former Forgotten, spoke with hard-won wisdom: "I was empty for three hundred years. These constructs have only been empty for decades. They're not lost yet. Just... sleeping."
The pull northward intensified, as if the Convergence Point itself was impatient with our delays. But this moment mattered. Every construct who chose to wake up, every wolf who remembered they had a choice—this was the real battle.
"Commander," Thorne addressed his cousin directly. "Vera. Remember when we were cubs? You said efficiency was finding the fastest way to joy. When did it become the fastest way to nothing?"
For one perfect moment, Commander Vega looked lost. Not empty like the Forgotten, not efficient like the Order. Just lost.
And in that moment of uncertainty, seventeen constructs broke formation entirely, walking toward our group with wondering eyes.
The defection shattered more than formation—it shattered doctrine.
"Stand down," Commander Vega ordered, but her voice carried defeat. The remaining constructs held position, but their perfect stillness now looked more like paralysis than discipline. "The Order will require... recalibration."
She turned to leave, then paused. "The Convergence Point changes everything it touches, cousin. Even efficiency. Be careful what transformations you invite."
As the Order's forces withdrew—diminished, confused, their geometric certainty fractured—our group swelled to fifty-three. Seventeen former constructs, blinking in the morning sun like newborns. Michael, Clara, and Evelyn moved among them, guiding first steps into chosen feeling.
"Names later," Clara told them gently. "First, just breathe and know the breath is yours."
The pull northward became undeniable. Luna had started walking without seeming to notice, drawn like iron to lodestone. The hungry friend's anticipation thrummed through our expanded group. We were close—maybe hours from whatever waited at the center of all this calling.
"No more delays," Virelle said, and for the first time in days, she smiled. Not at victory over the Order, but at something else. "Can you feel it? The world holding its breath. Everything we've built, everyone we've gathered—it all matters for what comes next."
Sage from Haven laughed, her memory-gift showing flashes of possible futures. "I can't hold onto the visions, but they all agree on one thing. After today, 'empty' and 'full' won't mean what they used to."
We formed up—not in military precision but in organic community. Constructs learning to feel walked beside Forgotten learning to remember. Memory-broken held hands with weather-touched. At our center, one small girl carried an ancient hunger toward its feeding.
The Convergence Point waited, patient as gravity.
We crested the final ridge at midday, and there it was.
The Convergence Point didn't look like power. It looked like a wound in the world—a spiral of not-quite-light that pulled color from the surrounding landscape. Reality folded around it like paper crumpling in slow motion. At its edges, past and present and possibility blurred together into something that made the eyes water.
"Beautiful," Luna breathed, and she was right. It was beautiful the way storms are beautiful—terrible and perfect and inevitable.
Our expanded group spread along the ridge, fifty-three wolves staring at the thing that had called us across impossible miles. Below, others had already gathered. I saw Order uniforms mixed with unmarked wanderers. A cluster that might have been Deepwood's full contingent. And there—a shimmer of coordinated movement that could only be more Forgotten, though these moved differently than Selene's followers.
"The old bloodlines," Virelle confirmed. "Families that survived the first Convergence. They've been waiting three thousand years for another chance."
At the center of it all, the spiral turned lazily, patiently. Waiting for... something. The right moment. The right person. Or maybe just enough broken wolves to tip reality toward change.
Luna took a step down the slope. Then another. The hungry friend's presence billowed around her like invisible wings. "It's time," she said simply. "Everyone who's coming, come now."
River clutched Branch's hand. "What if we chose wrong? What if emptiness was safer?"
"Then we'll choose wrong together," Marcus answered, his empathy wrapping them in shared courage.
Fifty-three wolves began our descent toward transformation, not knowing if we walked toward healing or another kind of breaking.
But we walked together.