The silence in the dojo was a heavy, suffocating thing, broken only by Jake's awestruck whisper. "A multiversal incursion." He said it again, tasting the words, a scholar who had just stumbled upon the living, breathing subject of his wildest theoretical fantasies.
Nina was the first to recover. The shock on her face was quickly replaced by a familiar, sharp-edged focus. She stood up, her movements crisp and decisive, and walked to the small whiteboard used for announcing practice schedules. She picked up a dry-erase marker. The simple, mundane act seemed to ground them all, pulling them back from the precipice of cosmic horror.
"Okay," she said, her voice a sharp crack in the silence. "Debrief. Now. Kofi, you're the primary source. Walk us through it. Everything on that… that screen in your head. Assume we know nothing. Because we know nothing."
