The birth of the 'Garden Shard', as it came to be known, was a new legend in the making. It was a testament to the Nexus's new philosophy: that no story, no matter how broken or corrupted, was beyond redemption.
But the universe, even a redeemed one, is a place of infinite complexity. And a new, more subtle, and far more personal challenge was beginning to emerge.
The children.
The new generation of the Nexus, the children and grandchildren of the heroes of the Great Wars, were growing up in a world of perfect, stable peace. They had never known a real struggle. They had never faced a true antagonist. Their lives were… safe. And they were getting bored.
They would listen, wide-eyed, to the old stories of their parents and grandparents. The tales of the System Apocalypse, of the war against the Silent, of the first, terrifying encounters with the Mimesis. To them, these were not histories. They were thrilling, wonderful, and impossibly distant fairy tales.
