Bolt lay on the cool floor, his transformed body feeling as fragile as spun glass.
The connection, when it had severed, had been a violent tearing, and the lingering mental "scent" of Valerius's cold, intellectual fury was a poison that made his own thoughts feel sluggish and foreign.
Eva was kneeling beside him, her hand resting on his massive shoulder, her face pale but her eyes blazing with a protective fire.
"The shields held," Elara announced, her voice calm but unable to completely mask the strain.
Her Aethelgardian colleagues were moving quickly, their actions reinforcing the sanctuary's defenses, their empathic network alive with urgent, silent communication.
"But the energy signature was… formidable. He used a focused psychic lance, a technique we have not seen deployed in this era. He knows our approximate location now, even if our precise position remains shielded. He will not be deterred so easily."
As Bolt slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, leaning heavily against a crystalline support, he shared the message that had been burned into his consciousness in that final, startling moment of contact.
"'The Oracle of Thune seeks you'," he repeated, his voice still a rasp. "It wasn't a warning from Valerius. It was from one of the dissenters. A strong one. It felt… like a lifeline."
The name sent a new ripple of consternation through Elara and the other Aethelgardians.
"Thune," Elara whispered, her opalescent eyes widening slightly. "That is a name from the very oldest echoes, from the time before the Great Schism."
She immediately dispatched her loremasters to the deepest, most shielded archives, tasking them with searching for any fragment relating to the name.
The air crackled with a new kind of urgency, different from the threat of Krell, more ancient and profound.
Eva, ever practical, turned her attention to the immediate threat.
"So, let's assume Valerius sends ships now, not just psychic probes. How long can these shields last against an actual fleet? And what's our exit strategy? The Nyxwing is barely holding together."
"Our sanctuary is well-defended against conventional attack, Captain Rostova," Elara assured her, "but a prolonged siege, especially one led by a strategist like Valerius who understands Progenitor-level arts, would be… unwise to endure. Our priority must be to repair the Nyxwing and find a new path for Bolt."
Bolt felt a strange duality within him. On one hand, he was acutely aware of Valerius's lingering, hateful gaze, a predator who now knew the scent of his prey.
But on the other, he felt the faint, distant, but now coherent, network of the resisting Canids, a fragile web of hope he had helped to weave. And at the center of that web was the clear, disciplined mind that had sent the message – a mind that felt like a fortress of quiet defiance.
He had made a powerful enemy, but he had also found allies, however distant and embattled.
Hours passed. Eva oversaw the initial, miraculous repairs to the Nyxwing, as Aethelgardian "shapers" used focused light and resonant frequencies to persuade the ship's damaged hull to slowly mend itself.
Bolt rested, using the Focusing Sphere to help untangle his own bruised empathic senses from the lingering poison of Valerius's probe.
Finally, Elara returned, her expression one of deep gravity. "The archives have yielded… fragments," she said, her voice hushed.
"Thune was not a person, as we first thought. It was a place. A hidden monastery world, or perhaps a mobile deep-space cloister, that served as the heart of an ancient Canid order known as the 'Weavers of Harmony'."
She projected a faint, time-worn image into the air.
It was a variation of the Canid spiral symbol, but instead of radiating outward for dominion, its lines turned inward, creating an intricate, endless knot of connection.
"The Weavers," Elara explained, "were empaths and psions of immense power, and they were the primary philosophical opponents of those who followed the path of the Dominion Sigil".
"They believed the true purpose of the Canid 'Primal Mandate' was not to control the cosmos, but to understand and harmonize it, to act as its empathetic caretakers".
"The 'Oracle' was the title of their leader."
"An ancient order of Canids who thought like you do," Eva said, looking at Bolt.
"The legends say Thune was destroyed during the First Schism, its knowledge lost," Elara continued.
"But the message you received, Seed-Bearer, suggests otherwise. It implies that the Weavers of Harmony, or their descendants, still exist. The 'Oracle of Thune' lives, and they are aware of you."
"And they are fighting Valerius," Bolt added, the pieces clicking into place. "From within his own power base."
Elara nodded.
"But there is one more detail. One last fragment our loremasters uncovered." She looked at Bolt, her gaze heavy with significance.
"According to the most obscure of these legends, the location of Thune was a secret protected by the highest Progenitor arts. It was not on any map. The only way to find its hidden path… was with a key."
She shifted the projection. A new image appeared beside the Weavers' knot.
It was a stylized, impossibly ancient depiction of a colossal, crystalline tree, its branches holding stars, its roots delving into the fabric of space.
Bolt's breath caught in his throat. It was the Nebula's Dreaming Tree.
"The legends say the key to finding Thune," Elara said softly, "is a resonance, an understanding, that can only be unlocked by communing with the very source of the Ahna'sara's life-energy: the 'Heartwood'."
The two great mysteries of Bolt's journey – the enigmatic vision from the Silent Listener and the desperate cry for help from within the Canid Confederacy – were not separate paths.
They were one and the same, a single, impossibly ancient and dangerous road leading into the heart of the galaxy's oldest secrets.