The newborn node pulsed unevenly.
Its light—once timid but steadily strengthening—now flickered with erratic tremors, as though a distant pressure brushed against senses it did not yet understand. Its awareness stretched outward along the constellation's lattice, and somewhere beyond mapped territory, something vast shifted.
Across the void, the Predator had moved again.
Not with the violent surges of its earlier hunts.
This time it glided.
Silent. Calculated. Intentional.
It threaded between gravitational eddies like a needle slipping through fabric, its mass compressing space without tearing it. Dark filaments extended from its core—testing currents, measuring resistance, cataloging response times. It was no longer simply feeding.
It was studying.
Ethan felt the shift instantly.
His gaze sharpened as convergence lines within his domain recalculated trajectories. "It's approaching the unclaimed sparks," he said quietly.
