The Weave had become the nervous system of their nascent alliance. Its silvery threads hummed with the constant, low-level thrum of shared existence, a comforting background sensation that had quickly become indispensable. The brief, terrifying incident with the amplified bliss had been a warning shot, but in the days that followed, the network remained stable, its defenses seemingly holding. A fragile sense of confidence began to return.
It was a false dawn.
The first sign of the true assault was not an attack, but an absence.
Luna was in the middle of mediating a complex energy transfer between Ember's people and a crystalline society from a recently connected universe. The transfer was delicate, requiring precise synchronization. Suddenly, the constant, warm, grounding presence of Ember in the Weave… vanished.
