The conviction in Luna's voice, her declaration of war against sorrow itself, settled like a fine, cold dust over the Silverstone Spire. In the days that followed, Seraphina watched her daughter with a new, hyper-vigilant intensity. Luna's play was now punctuated by long, quiet moments where she would simply sit, her small hand resting over her chest, her gaze turned inward. She was communing with the stowaway shadow. Seraphina could feel the subtle, psychic ripples—not a battle, but a conversation, a relentless, gentle pressure of pure, childlike optimism pressing against an eons-old wall of despair. It was a terrifyingly benign form of experimentation.
Meanwhile, the Convocation continued its work, a fragile beacon of order in the multiverse. But a new kind of report began to trickle in, subtle at first, then growing in frequency and concern. They weren't distress calls about cosmic decay or physical invasions. They were whispers of… disquiet.
