The transition from the Core of the First Word back into the manifest Shards was not the clean, instantaneous jump Han had expected. Instead of a swift passage through the Primal Current, The Echo of Wood seemed to be wading through thick, golden syrup.
The ship, now coated in the dust of the dissolved Silver Key, didn't just vibrate; it hummed with a low, choral resonance. The wood of the hull had begun to grow tiny, translucent leaves that shimmered with the text of the variables they had already discovered.
"We aren't just traveling through the Multiverse anymore," Vahn observed, his sphere-form expanding and contracting like a slow-beating heart. "We are dragging the 'Source' along with us. The reality behind us is thickening."
Han stood at the prow, his iron mallet hooked to his be
