The pocket world had never known a feast like this one.
The Regalons had built a life across three layers of a merciless world, and now they had a home in the upper layer to celebrate it in, and they did not hold back. Long tables ran the length of the pocket realm beneath the vast canopy of the Virion Iridant Tree, and every one of them groaned under the weight of Ainen's cooking. The smell of it drifted across the whole realm, warm and endless, and no one who sat down went hungry for long.
It was not a quiet celebration. The family had spent too long climbing to be quiet now. Laughter rolled from table to table, old fighters told older stories, and the young ones ran between the fires while their elders pretended not to watch them fondly. After everything, after slavery and scattering and a trial that had tried its best to break them, they had earned the right to simply be happy for a night, and they took it.
