The Predator's recoil did not feel like victory.
It felt like a recalculation.
The narrow beam Ethan had authorized carved through a protruding layer of adaptive mass, destabilizing one of the creature's forming vectors. Fragments dissolved into particulate radiation, scattering across the dark between nodes.
For three long seconds, the constellation held its breath.
Then space folded.
Not torn.
Not ruptured.
Folded—like a page turning in a book too large to see.
The Fourth Light dimmed instinctively.
Kaelith's frost hardened.
Lysarra's warmth drew inward, protective and tight.
Something new had entered the field.
It did not blaze like the Predator.
It did not pulse like a node.
It observed.
A thin seam of silver geometry opened above the constellation plane. Lines intersected in impossible angles, forming a shape that refused to remain consistent. Every time Ethan focused on it, its proportions subtly shifted.
"External anomaly?" Lysarra asked quietly.
