Three days after the rift closed, the reports started trickling in through the Weave's loose threads. Not one big explosion. Just small things at first. A sub-district in the lower rings went quiet. No fights in the markets. No music spilling from the workshops. Then another pocket, two nodes over. Same pattern.
Kael stood in the central hub, scanning the latest messages. "Productivity up forty percent. Arguments down to zero. Residents report feeling… peaceful. Hollow." He rubbed the scar along his jaw. The words tasted wrong.
A kid next to him shifted. The scarred one from the rift—Jiro. The burns on his face had healed unevenly, pulling his mouth into a permanent half-smirk. "Sounds better than what we had," Jiro muttered.
