Location:Off-World (Beastkin World) → Nexus Transit → Obsidian Academy
Date/Time:Late Emberwane, 9939 AZI (Day 17)
Realm:Nexus Mission → Lower Realm
The grove was different in the morning light.
Not healed — nothing healed in seventeen days. But the trees stood straighter. The bioluminescence pulsed with a rhythm that was steadier than when they'd arrived — the stuttering heartbeat of a failing organ replaced by something that approximated, if you listened carefully, the slow and patient beat of an ecosystem remembering how to function.
The Heartstone glowed. Not brightly. Not the way Isha described the Heartstones of thriving worlds. This glow was the light of a candle that had almost gone out and was now, through the particular stubbornness of flame, finding the wick again.
