After the mourning period ended, the world did not immediately become cheerful.
The grief remained.
But something inside the thousand races had changed.
They no longer mourned as if mourning itself was the end.
The processions had given shape to what many could not say. The dead had been named. Their sacrifices had been recorded. Their families had been answered. Their allies had been connected across continents by more than emergency orders and battlefield reports.
The sorrow did not vanish.
It found direction.
Lootwell's procession had worked.
Not because it removed grief.
Because it taught the living where to put it.
•••
The five-continent stabilization project continued soon after.
This time, the work moved more smoothly.
The continents still carried wounds, but the wounds had stopped tearing themselves open with every breath.
And at the center of that work were the slimes.
That fact spread faster than any official report.
