Lucien merged the new fragments into the Origin Core Shrine.
The Origin Core remained incomplete.
But it was no longer merely a collection of broken pieces.
It had begun behaving like something that remembered what it used to be.
The first change after the hundredth fragment had already been immense.
Lucien felt it spread through the near void.
Across the planetary system where the Big World moved.
Lucien opened his eyes slowly.
"So that's how it works."
The Origin Core fragments did not expand like ordinary signals.
It was not a lamp growing brighter by a little.
It was a broken whole remembering more of its original shape.
Every fragment did not merely add range. It added lost coordinates, missing authority, and more of the original structure that had once connected everything under its rule.
That was why the range expanded so violently after one hundred fragments.
The Origin Core was not reaching farther through power alone.
