The Constellation's pulse gradually slowed.
Where moments ago energy had surged in brilliant defensive arcs, now it drifted in long, measured waves. The Predator—calculating, adaptive, dangerous—had withdrawn beyond the reach of their sensors after repeated resistance. It had not fled in panic.
It had chosen distance.
And that choice left a rare, fragile stillness in its wake.
Silence spread across the void like a velvet mantle, thick and dark and humming faintly with the residue of battle. Fragments of displaced starlight drifted along gravitational currents. The lattice lines connecting the triad and their newborn sovereign shimmered with quiet strength instead of strain.
Inside the Convergence Axis, the three of them remained.
