The battlefield quieted, but the silence no longer felt fragile.
It felt deliberate.
Beyond the outer defensive lattice, the Predator's bifurcated halves drifted at extreme range—vast silhouettes warped by gravitational curvature. They no longer hurled themselves blindly at the constellation's perimeter. No reckless surges. No probing strikes.
They circled.
Measured.
Patient.
Like wounded apex hunters reassessing prey that had proven capable of biting back.
Their trajectories overlapped and diverged in slow arcs, testing angles, studying response times, mapping the burn signature of the newly ignited Fourth Light. They had adapted.
Inside the constellation, the triad convened within the Convergence Axis.
The chamber's geometry stabilized into clean, luminous symmetry. Projection arcs rotated in steady cadence. Telemetry streamed in controlled cascades of data.
