There was no party this year. No cake of cloud-stuff, no gathered laughter. The air in the Home Dimension held a permanent charge of ozone and grief, a memorial to the connections lost in the Weave's brutal baptism by fire. The network still functioned, but it was leaner, quieter, its silvery threads bearing the scars of amputation. It was a tool of war now, not just a ribbon of unity.
On this day, Luna turned four.
She stood before a shimmering, three-dimensional tactical display that hovered in the center of the meadow, a creation of the Chronos Guard and the Fae Queen's light-weaving. It showed a vast, simplified map of the known multiverse, with pinpricks of light representing allied realities and pulsing, gray smudges marking zones of the Lord of Nothing's influence. Several lights that had once burned brightly were now dark.
