The first sign was not violence.
It was silence.
Across the outer horizon of their expanding constellation, anomaly signatures dimmed one by one—not in chaotic bursts, not in unstable ruptures, but in smooth, precise disappearances. Where once there would have been distortion shockwaves or residue turbulence, now there was only a thinning of presence.
Like breath drawn in and never released.
Ethan stood within the Convergence Axis, awareness extended across millions of interlocked data streams. The newborn node pulsed softly behind him, its identity still crystallizing, its sovereignty fragile but growing. Lysarra's golden radiance laced the surrounding void with solar filaments, delicate yet potent. Kaelith's frost-lattice overlaid everything in geometric precision, mapping probability vectors in crystalline arcs.
Another anomaly winked out.
Not destroyed.
Unmade.
