Summer unfurled, and with it an explosion of spokes on every road. Farmers pedaled crates to town; couriers brandished sealed satchels; even traveling minstrels strapped lutes to rear racks, roaming wider circuits. Each new rider demanded paths, inns, repair shops—thus birthing more opportunity.
Sharath watched the emergent pattern on a map in the manor library—ink dots for towns, lines for cycle routes, thickness denoting traffic. Where three thick lines converged, trade tripled; where four, taverns sprouted; where five, a new smith petitioned for a franchise. The kingdom was turning into a living graph, edges strengthening nodes.
"This," Sharath told Elina during an evening mirror call, "is Metcalfe's principle in action—value scaling with the square of connected users." She laughed. "You turn romance into mathematics."
They launched the Cycle Waystation Program: modest shelters every ten miles, stocked with water, tools, and bulletin boards of printed news. SK Paper donated broadsheets; local guilds funded benches. Users tacked notices—lost goats, festival invites, job offers. Information flowed along with people.
At the annual harvest fair, Sharath stood on a wagon roof and asked riders to raise hands if a cycle had changed their livelihood. A sea of arms rose—farmwives, scribes, midwives, tinkers. He felt a lump in his throat: not pride, but wonder at collective motion set in train by one improbable rebirth.
That night, under lantern glow, Lord Darsha mused, "The kingdom hums differently now—faster, yet strangely more harmonious." Sharath glanced toward the dark horizon, where distant waystation lamps flickered like fireflies strung on invisible threads.
"We've wound the first net," he said softly. "Next, we weave it tighter—and see what new worlds it can catch."
The wheels kept turning; the network kept growing; and a boy's vision rolled ever onward into history.