Dawn brought clarity and new information. Nima’s instruments, no longer fighting deletion, registered three distinct secondary pulses that had not been present the day before. One lay far to the south in coastal wetlands. One flickered in the high northern ranges beyond Harth. The third was diffuse, as if it belonged to the sea itself or to something that moved beneath it.
Tallen stared at the readings with the expression of a man who had just realized his life’s work would never fit into a single career. “The network is cascading. Limiting the Growth has removed a damper that was older than the rest of the system. Everything related is waking faster.”
Coren nodded. “The builders feared exactly this. That is why they chose removal over limitation. They did not believe an edge was possibl
