The lattice no longer counted cycles in the old way. Numbers had long since softened into rhythms, and rhythms into something closer to breath. What had once been measured by orbital returns or stellar rotations now arrived as the slow unfurling of a single leaf on a distant world, or the moment a child in a ring habitat first noticed that silence could feel warmer than sound. The Fourteenth Epoch had passed without ceremony into what some called the Epoch of Gentle Dimming, though no one insisted on the name. Names, like urgent messages, had become optional.
Across the breadth of settled space the green continued its patient expansion. Vines bridged asteroid belts with living bridges that carried both nutrients and quiet stories. Crystal archives on rogue planets grew new facets without
