Location:Southern Virescent Expanse — Waste Zone Edge, Thorn-Hide Territory
Date/Time:TC1854.04.16-18
The root network screamed.
Not the slow, grinding agony that had been bleeding from the waste zone for years — a sharp signal. Urgent. Cascading through every connected tree in the Expanse like a nerve impulse through a body. Raven felt it through the Kirin bead's life-sense — a disruption in the organic communication layer, something tearing through the deep forest with enough force to sever root connections and leave silence where there should have been signal.
She was in the recovery camp when it hit. Day nine — the soldiers healing, Sera's organizational structure humming, the circle of restored ground now two hundred and twenty meters in diameter and still growing. The bioluminescent channels at the edge of the healed zone flickered brighter and then went dark. Not failure. Fear. The organic light systems shutting down the way animals go silent when a predator passes.
