The lattice had learned, over uncounted cycles, that true continuity required occasional pauses. Not the erasure of the Void Echo, nor the cold uniformity of pre-merge entropy, but deliberate quiet spaces where the hum could rest and listen to itself. These pauses appeared without announcement, scattered across systems like deliberate breaths between verses in an endless poem. Worlds would notice first as a subtle slowing: tides holding their pull a fraction longer, winds hesitating mid-gust, stars seeming to flicker with unusual patience. Minds across the green weave felt it as a gentle inward turn, an invitation to remember without urgency.
One such pause arrived unheralded during the era when the outer colonies had begun naming their first rogue planets not as waystations but as homes.
