The convergence did not arrive all at once.
It assembled.
Piece by piece—not in space, but in meaning.
At first, it was only a subtle increase in coherence at the centre of the lattice. A gathering of relationships tightening, aligning, forming a focal point that did not yet have shape, but already had gravity.
Not physical gravity.
Intent.
Neo felt it before he understood it.
A pull—not on his body, but on his awareness. A quiet insistence that something was beginning to organise around a question none of them had consciously asked.
And yet—
all of them were answering.
Ast was the first to respond without hesitation.
She leaned into the convergence the way she had approached everything since they crossed the threshold—without resistance, without the need to define it first. Her presence softened the edges of the forming structure, allowing it to stabilise without hardening.
"It's listening," she said.
Cassandra made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a protest.
