The seventh stone haunted Danny in a way the others did not.
It wasn't louder.
It wasn't closer.
It was absent.
That absence pulled at the lattice of the six secured stones like a missing chord in a harmony that should have resolved. Danny felt it every time he closed his eyes—an unfinished shape, a promise suspended between intention and consequence.
He left the sigil chamber quietly.
The corridors of B.U.D.D.I.E.S. HQ were quieter at this hour, lights dimmed, foot traffic minimal. Even so, Danny felt watched—not by cameras or guards, but by the weight of decisions embedded in the station's walls. This place was built to manage responsibility, not absolve it.
He stopped at a viewport overlooking the docking arms.
Below, fleets rested in layered formation: Arrowheads, Switchblades, carrier tenders, maintenance barges drifting in slow choreography. Power enough to shatter civilizations. Discipline enough to keep it sheathed.
For now.
A soft footstep approached behind him.
"You're thinking too loudly again," Swift said.
Danny smiled faintly and turned. Swift looked… human again. No scales. No wings. Just silver eyes reflecting starlight and a posture that carried exhaustion and resolve in equal measure.
"I didn't know that was a thing," Danny said.
"It is when you're standing next to someone who keeps pulling on the universe like it's a loose thread," Swift replied dryly.
They leaned against the railing together, silence comfortable between them.
"Jake's asleep," Swift added. "Which means Bumble is reorganizing his quarters."
Danny chuckled softly. "That explains the alert I got about a 'structural optimization incident.'"
Swift sighed. "He's grown attached."
"So has Jake," Danny said. "He just won't admit it."
Swift studied Danny for a moment. "You're different."
Danny didn't deflect. "I'm listening."
Swift nodded. "Good. Because you need to hear this before it becomes a problem."
Danny turned fully toward him.
"Bones isn't wrong about one thing," Swift said carefully. "Creation without limits does create blind spots. I've seen it. I lived it."
Danny waited.
"When Bones tricked me into freeing him," Swift continued, voice low, "it wasn't fear that did it. It was certainty. I thought I knew what was right. I thought I was fixing something."
He looked away, jaw tight. "I don't want you making the same mistake in the opposite direction."
Danny absorbed that. "You think I'm leaning too hard into permanence."
"I think you're learning to stay," Swift replied. "And staying is harder than leaving."
Danny nodded slowly. "That's why I need people who will tell me when I'm wrong."
Swift met his gaze. "Then don't push them away when they do."
Elsewhere in the station, Sedge Hat stood alone in an archive chamber so old its walls still bore hand-carved sigils from a time before standardized encoding.
He traced a finger along one etched line—his own handwriting, centuries old.
Custodianship is not guardianship of stone.
It is guardianship of choice.
He closed his eyes.
For the first time since his world burned, Sedge Hat felt something dangerously close to hope—and it terrified him.
Because hope implied stakes.
And stakes implied the possibility of loss.
—
Elysara didn't sleep again.
She sat cross-legged on her bed, braid undone, pale hair spilling around her shoulders as she replayed Bones' words over and over—not the offer, but the tone. He hadn't spoken like a conqueror or a god.
He'd spoken like someone who had watched the same tragedy repeat until boredom turned into bitterness.
She pressed a hand against her chest, feeling the faint warmth there. Creation stirred in her blood—not enough to ignite flame or reshape reality, but enough to respond.
"You're not inevitable," she whispered into the empty room.
But the question lingered.
What if Danny was?
What if saving everything meant breaking something first?
The thought frightened her—not because it came from Bones, but because part of her understood why someone might believe it.
—
On the edge of the multiverse, far from headquarters and fleets, Bones stood at the center of a broken world.
Green fire traced lazy arcs around him as Dark Buddies harvested the last remnants of civilization—fear, despair, entropy feeding into him like breath into lungs.
He felt stronger.
Not complete.
But closer.
"Six stones gathered," he murmured. "One held back. One choice away."
He smiled faintly.
"They're learning," Bones said to the empty sky. "They always do… just a little too late."
Behind him, in a containment sphere humming with possibility, Magic Kid watched the B.L.O.B. evolve.
Two disasters in motion.
One truth between them.
And somewhere in the vast machinery of fate, the cycle waited—not to be broken, but to be understood.
The message from Jade arrived at an hour when most of the station pretended to rest.
It did not come through official channels.
It slipped past them.
Danny felt it before he read it—a tightening at the base of his skull, the faint sensation of something approaching relevance. He pulled the data packet up in his peripheral display as he walked, pace slowing, attention narrowing.
Raw telemetry. Growth curves. Audio distortion that prickled the senses.
And Jade's assessment, stripped of bravado and sarcasm.
Not contained. Not accidental. Being guided.
Danny stopped in the corridor.
The words being guided echoed louder than any alarm could have.
"Jimmy," he said softly, opening a secure channel. "We need to talk about the B.L.O.B."
Jimmy's response was immediate. "I was hoping you'd say that."
Danny exhaled. "That doesn't make me feel better."
"It shouldn't," Jimmy replied. "Jade's report aligns with something we intercepted three hours ago. Fragmentary, but consistent."
"What?" Danny asked.
"A Dark Buddy logistics reroute," Jimmy said. "Mass shipments. Organic stabilizers. Slime-derived containment fields."
Danny closed his eyes.
"Magic Kid," he said.
"Yes," Jimmy agreed. "And Bones knows he's doing it."
"Or doesn't care," Danny countered.
Jimmy was quiet for a beat. "Those are not mutually exclusive."
They ended the call without ceremony. There was nothing actionable yet—only convergence. Only threads pulling tighter.
Danny resumed walking.
He didn't notice when his steps carried him back toward the sigil chamber.
The six stones greeted him with patient silence.
They did not warn him about the B.L.O.B.
They did not react to Bones' movements.
They did not judge.
They waited.
"Is this what you were built for?" Danny asked quietly. "To end something… and hope nothing worse takes its place?"
The stones offered no answer.
Because they never had.
—
Elysara found him there.
She didn't announce herself. She simply stepped into the chamber and stood beside him, gaze drawn inexorably to the floating geometry of the stones.
"There's more now," she said.
Danny nodded. "Six."
She swallowed. "It feels heavier."
"It is," Danny replied. "Not because of what they can do. Because of what they represent."
She hesitated, then spoke. "Bones spoke to me."
The words landed cleanly. No shock. No denial.
Danny turned slowly to face her.
"Tell me," he said.
She did.
Not embellishing. Not minimizing. She described the forest, the calm voice, the absence of threat. The offer of perspective rather than power. The idea that Danny—creation embodied—might become dangerous not through malice, but through endurance.
When she finished, silence stretched between them.
"You don't believe him," Danny said.
"I don't trust him," Elysara replied. "There's a difference."
Danny nodded. "He tells truths sideways."
"That's what scares me," she admitted. "Not that he lies. That he frames."
Danny looked back at the stones. "He wants someone inside the equation who understands why people opened the cage the first time."
Elysara's breath hitched. "You think that's me."
"I think he hopes it could be," Danny said. "But hoping doesn't mean winning."
She studied him closely. "And you? What do you hope?"
Danny didn't answer immediately.
"I hope," he said slowly, "that creation can learn to take responsibility without turning into control."
Elysara stepped closer, close enough that the warmth from his presence bled into her skin. "And if it can't?"
Danny met her gaze. "Then we'll fail honestly. Not quietly."
That seemed to steady her.
—
On the Lupine homeworld, the Wolf Queen watched Mira train at dawn.
The courtyard rang with the sound of claws against stone, shadow and flame interweaving as Mira moved through forms that blended old martial discipline with her new nature. She was faster now. Sharper. More dangerous.
But she was not unmoored.
"She chose well," the Wolf Queen said.
The Wolf King stood beside her, arms crossed. "She chose belonging."
The Wolf Queen nodded. "And you chose her."
Shadeclaw stood nearby, silent, watchful.
The Wolf Queen's gaze slid to him. "Protect her."
Shadeclaw met her eyes. "With everything."
That was enough.
—
Far away, in a chamber lit by shifting green flame, Bones listened.
Not to reports. Not to strategy.
To patterns.
Six stones in one place.
One held elsewhere.
A diluted heir wrestling with doubt.
A guardian who chose to stay.
A trickster raising a god-shaped question in slime.
Bones smiled—not wide, not manic.
Content.
"Good," he murmured. "They're finally arguing about the right things."
He turned his attention outward.
Not toward the cage.
Toward the moment someone would decide they couldn't bear the cost of keeping it closed.
And in that inevitability, Bones waited—not as a monster, but as a consequence no one had finished accounting for.
The decision to convene the inner council came without ceremony.
No broadcast.
No summons echoed across the station.
Just a quiet convergence of people who already knew they needed to be there.
They gathered in one of the oldest rooms aboard B.U.D.D.I.E.S. HQ—a circular chamber lined with stone and alloy, its walls etched with records not meant for public archives. This room had witnessed the first sigil-stone briefings. The first containment failures. The first time Jimmy had learned that paperwork could not save a universe.
Danny arrived last.
Not because he was late.
Because everyone else had arrived early.
Jimmy stood at the center, hands resting lightly on a projection table that displayed a simplified model of the multiverse: glowing nodes connected by threads of probability. Six sigil stones pulsed in steady orbit around a central void marked BONES — UNCONTAINED.
Sedge Hat leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, gaze fixed on nothing and everything at once.
Solmara sat apart from them, ring dim, posture straight but guarded. She had not been welcomed warmly by everyone here—but she had been welcomed honestly.
Jade Killington occupied a chair near the edge, boots hooked casually over its base, eyes sharp and humor conspicuously absent.
Swift and Jake stood together, quiet, listening. Bumble hovered near Jake's shoulder, optics flickering softly as if trying to understand why the room felt heavier than usual.
Elysara stood beside Danny as he took his place, her presence subtle but undeniable. She felt the stones even here—not calling, not demanding, but acknowledging her existence in a way that made her skin prickle.
Jimmy cleared his throat.
"All right," he said. "Let's stop pretending we're dealing with one problem."
He gestured, and the projection shifted.
On one side: Bones, marked by spreading fractures where Dark Buddy operations flared across the multiverse.
On another: B.L.O.B., its growth curve a jagged ascent that ended in question marks and red extrapolation warnings.
And at the center: The Sigil Cage, incomplete, elegant, fragile.
"Bones wants the cage destabilized," Jimmy continued. "Not necessarily destroyed. He's playing a longer game than brute force."
Sedge Hat spoke without looking up. "He wants precedent."
Jade nodded. "He wants someone to decide opening it is justified."
Solmara added quietly, "And he wants Danny positioned as the unavoidable reason."
All eyes turned—briefly, respectfully—toward Danny.
He didn't flinch.
"I won't walk away," Danny said. "And I won't rule through fear."
Jimmy nodded. "Good. Because neither option actually stops him."
Jake shifted. "So what does?"
Silence followed.
Not ignorance.
Calculation.
Finally, Elysara spoke.
"Understanding," she said.
Every head turned.
She swallowed but continued. "Bones isn't trying to win a battle. He's trying to finish an argument. One that started when the Golden Dragons sealed him and left."
Sedge Hat's jaw tightened—but he didn't disagree.
"If the cage closes again without addressing that argument," Elysara continued, "he'll find a way to reopen it. Not through force. Through people."
Swift nodded slowly. "Like he did with me."
"And like he tried to do with you," Jade said to Elysara, not accusing, just stating.
She met his gaze. "Yes."
Jimmy exhaled. "Which means this ends one of two ways."
He tapped the projection.
"One: we seal Bones again and commit to eternal vigilance. Not dragons leaving. Not custodians isolated. But a system that stays."
"And two?" Jake asked.
Jimmy didn't answer immediately.
Danny did.
"Or we redefine the cage," he said.
The room stilled.
"Explain," Jimmy said carefully.
"The stones don't judge," Danny continued. "They don't decide right or wrong. They only execute containment. The flaw wasn't the cage—it was the assumption that it was an ending."
Sedge Hat's eyes sharpened. "You're suggesting—"
"—that the cage becomes a process," Danny finished. "Not a prison abandoned in the dark, but a living system. Maintained. Questioned. Guarded by more than one will."
Solmara leaned forward slightly. "You're talking about binding creation and destruction into the same framework."
"Yes," Danny said. "Acknowledging both. Not pretending one can exist without the other."
Jade whistled softly. "That's either brilliant or catastrophic."
"Probably both," Jimmy replied dryly.
Bumble beeped. "STATISTICAL LIKELIHOOD: BOTH."
That earned a brief, strained laugh from the room—relief bleeding through tension.
Then Jimmy straightened.
"All right," he said. "Here's what we do."
He began assigning roles—not as orders, but as commitments.
"Jade," he said. "You continue tracking the B.L.O.B. If Magic Kid is shaping it, I want eyes on every step."
Jade nodded once. "Already moving."
"Solmara," Jimmy continued. "You keep working the Elemental Lords. That last stone doesn't stay with them forever."
Solmara inclined her head. "They're listening now. Even if they don't like what they hear."
"Wolf King will reinforce his borders," Jimmy said. "Not as a retreat—but as a statement. The Lupine Empire stands."
Danny felt the truth of that resonate.
"And you," Jimmy said, turning to Danny and Elysara together. "You prepare."
"For what?" Elysara asked.
Jimmy's expression was grim but steady.
"For the moment when Bones stops whispering," he said. "And asks someone—anyone—to open the door."
The council dissolved quietly, each person carrying their part of the weight.
As Danny and Elysara left the chamber, she reached for his hand.
He squeezed it once—grounded, present.
"We're not alone," she said.
"No," Danny agreed. "And that's the difference this time."
Far away, in a place where green fire licked at the bones of dying stars, Bones tilted his head.
He felt it.
Not resistance.
Not defiance.
Adaptation.
His smile widened just a little.
"Oh," he murmured. "Now this… this might actually be interesting."
And the cycle turned—not toward an ending, but toward a reckoning no one could avoid.
The reckoning did not arrive with fire.
It arrived with administration.
Jimmy sat alone in his office long after the council had dispersed, sleeves rolled up, a stack of datapads hovering in a semi-circle around him like nervous birds. Each contained a version of the same question, phrased differently depending on the department that had asked it.
Who is responsible if the cage fails again?
Who maintains it?
Who decides when intervention becomes imprisonment?
Who stays?
Jimmy rubbed his temples.
Six thousand years ago, he had accepted a mandate that no one else wanted because it was easier to say yes than to watch creation drift without a caretaker. Over time, the title changed—custodian, director, head of B.U.D.D.I.E.S.—but the work never did.
Someone always had to stay behind when the heroes left.
He opened a channel.
"Sedge Hat," Jimmy said.
The reply came almost immediately. "I'm here."
"Walk with me," Jimmy said. "If we sit too long, we'll convince ourselves this is theoretical."
They met on one of the long exterior corridors that curved around the station's spine, transparent walls revealing the endless movement of ships and personnel beyond. B.U.D.D.I.E.S. HQ was alive in a way few places were—thousands of decisions unfolding at once, each one small enough to feel manageable until you realized how many of them could go wrong.
"I never wanted the cage to be permanent," Sedge Hat said quietly as they walked. "I wanted it to be honest."
Jimmy snorted. "Honesty is expensive."
"Yes," Sedge Hat agreed. "Which is why the Golden Dragons avoided it."
They walked in silence for a while.
"Danny is different," Jimmy said eventually.
"He is," Sedge Hat replied. "Because he doesn't see creation as entitlement."
Jimmy glanced sideways at him. "You hurt him to teach that lesson."
"Yes," Sedge Hat said again, no flinch. "And I will answer for it when the universe decides I must."
Jimmy stopped walking.
"That's not how this works anymore," he said flatly. "No more isolated judgment. No more lone custodians convincing themselves they're right because no one is left to argue."
Sedge Hat studied him carefully. "You're afraid of repeating us."
"I'm afraid of needing to," Jimmy said.
—
Danny and Elysara found themselves in one of the station's arboretums, a place built to remind people that life didn't need to be vast to be meaningful. Trees arched overhead, leaves whispering softly in a climate-controlled breeze. Water flowed in shallow channels, reflecting the stars above through the transparent dome.
Elysara knelt by one of the channels, trailing her fingers through the water.
"I keep thinking about what Bones said," she admitted.
Danny didn't tell her not to.
"He wasn't asking me to betray you," she continued. "He was asking me to temper you."
Danny leaned against a tree, arms crossed loosely. "Do you think he's wrong?"
She looked up at him, eyes searching. "I think he's dangerous because he's right about some things."
Danny nodded slowly. "Truth without context is a weapon."
"And context without truth is a lie," she countered.
He smiled faintly. "You're already better at this than most gods."
She snorted softly. "That's not comforting."
"No," Danny agreed. "But it's useful."
She stood, stepping closer. "If this becomes what you think it might—if you really do have to stay—what happens to the rest of us?"
Danny met her gaze fully. "Then I don't stay alone."
The answer seemed to settle something in her.
—
Jade Killington didn't like arboretums.
Too open. Too clean. Too many places for something to pretend to be harmless.
He preferred the lower decks—maintenance corridors, forgotten transit hubs, places where systems ran because no one remembered how to turn them off. That's where patterns revealed themselves.
He stood in front of a holo-map now, layered with his own annotations. Supply routes. Black-market transfers. Biological material shipments rerouted through shell corporations that didn't exist in any registry worth trusting.
Magic Kid's fingerprints were everywhere.
"He's not building an army," Jade muttered. "He's building options."
He keyed another transmission—this one to Danny directly.
Magic Kid is not accelerating B.L.O.B. growth randomly. He's stress-testing behavior. Teaching it restraint, not rage.
That scares me more than brute expansion.
He closed the channel and exhaled.
If the B.L.O.B. learned choice…
Jade grimaced.
—
Far from the station, in the quiet between dying stars, Bones listened.
He did not eavesdrop.
He did not spy.
He simply felt the shift in how the conversation around him had changed.
They were no longer asking how to stop him.
They were asking what stopping him meant.
That was progress.
He extended his awareness outward, brushing against the sigil stones—not touching, not interfering. Just acknowledging their presence like old scars.
"Six together," he murmured. "One apart."
He smiled faintly.
"Still room for doubt."
And doubt, Bones knew better than anyone, was the most reliable key of all.
The universe continued to move.
Not toward salvation.
Not toward ruin.
Toward a choice that no one would be able to pretend belonged to someone else.
The station did not shudder when the alert came in.
That was the first sign it was bad.
No red lights. No sirens. Just a quiet priority tone threading itself through command channels like a needle sliding under the skin.
Jimmy felt it before he read it.
He straightened slowly at his desk, one hand hovering over the datapads, the other already pulling the alert into focus.
SOURCE: SOLMARA
PRIORITY: ABSOLUTE
STATUS: ELEMENTAL LORDS—FRACTURE COMPLETE
Jimmy exhaled once, controlled, then opened the channel.
Solmara's image resolved in fractured light. She looked… tired. Not wounded. Not panicked. But worn in a way that suggested persuasion had finally reached its limit.
"They've split," she said without preamble. "Irreversibly."
Jimmy nodded. "Which means someone moved."
"Yes," Solmara replied. "Not openly. Not violently. But decisively."
She gestured, and a projection bloomed between them—seven sigil stone glyphs. Six glowed gold, locked into B.U.D.D.I.E.S. containment. One burned dim blue, isolated.
"The last stone has been relocated," Solmara said. "Terragorn orchestrated it, but Umbrakrell approved."
Jimmy's jaw tightened. "Approved how?"
Solmara's lips pressed thin. "By declaring that if Bones cannot be destroyed, then power must be centralized enough to control him."
Silence stretched.
"That's not containment," Jimmy said flatly. "That's delusion."
"They believe Danny is the variable," Solmara continued. "That if they can siphon creation through him—"
"—they can power the stones indefinitely," Jimmy finished. "And never risk sealing failure again."
Solmara met his gaze. "Yes."
Jimmy leaned back slowly, fingers steepled. "And the cost?"
"They don't consider it a cost," Solmara said. "They consider it inevitability."
The channel closed.
Jimmy didn't move for a long moment.
Then he stood.
—
Danny felt the shift immediately.
It rippled through the sigil chamber like a pressure drop, subtle but unmistakable. Six stones pulsed once in unison—not alarmed, not activated—but aware.
"The seventh moved," he said softly.
Elysara looked up from where she'd been seated on the chamber steps, eyes narrowing. "How far?"
"Far enough to matter," Danny replied.
He turned as Jimmy entered, Sedge Hat close behind him.
"Solmara confirmed it," Jimmy said. "Terragorn has the last stone. And a plan."
Danny's expression darkened. "To use me."
"Yes," Jimmy said. "As a battery. As a stabilizer. As a solution that doesn't require them to stay."
Sedge Hat's voice was quiet but venomous. "They want the benefits of creation without the burden of responsibility. Again."
Danny closed his eyes briefly.
"When?" he asked.
"Soon," Jimmy replied. "Before dissent spreads further. Before Solmara convinces anyone else."
Elysara stood. "They won't ask," she said. "They'll take."
Danny opened his eyes.
"Then we don't wait," he said.
—
On the Lupine homeworld, the Wolf King felt the same pull—a tightening of the pack-bond, a warning without words.
Shadeclaw appeared beside him in a ripple of shadow. "Something shifted."
"Yes," the Wolf King said. "The hunt moves."
Mira stepped forward, eyes gleaming. "Then we follow."
The Wolf King looked out across his empire—scarred, standing, alive.
"I will not let them chain creation again," he said. "Not to avoid responsibility."
—
And in a distant pocket of space, Magic Kid watched the B.L.O.B. complete another controlled division.
It paused afterward.
Waited.
Magic Kid's grin widened.
"Oh," he said softly. "You're learning patience. That's new."
He glanced at a secondary feed—sigil stone movements, Elemental Lord maneuvers, B.U.D.D.I.E.S. fleet mobilization.
"So many plans," Magic Kid mused. "So many adults trying to be sensible."
He floated closer to the containment field, eyes bright with delight.
"Let's see what happens," he whispered, "when everyone's solution requires you to behave."
The B.L.O.B. shifted.
Considered.
And for the first time, chose not to grow.
Far away, Bones felt it all converge.
Not victory.
Not defeat.
Alignment.
"Ah," he murmured, green fire curling lazily around him. "Now we arrive at the real question."
He smiled—not cruelly, not triumphantly.
Inevitably.
"Who decides when staying becomes imprisonment?"
And the universe, as always, refused to answer for them.
The mobilization was quiet.
That, too, was deliberate.
B.U.D.D.I.E.S. HQ did not light up its war beacons. Fleets did not scramble in obvious formations. Orders moved through secure channels in measured pulses, each one framed as logistics, as rotation, as preparedness. To an outside observer, it would have looked like routine.
To anyone who understood the pattern, it was the tightening of a fist.
Danny stood at the center of it without commanding it.
That was new.
In the past, when danger approached, eyes turned to him for action—for power, for intervention, for something dramatic enough to reassure everyone else that the universe was still manageable. Now, people moved because they understood why they were moving. Not because Danny could burn brighter than the problem.
He felt that shift as keenly as he felt the stones.
Six sigil stones remained stable in containment, their presence constant but no longer oppressive. They did not pull at him the way they once had. Instead, they felt… aligned. As if something in Danny had finally stopped resisting their purpose and started understanding it.
They were not ends.
They were tools that required caretakers.
Jimmy watched the preparations from the command gallery, arms folded, expression unreadable. He had seen wars begin with speeches and end with silence. This one was beginning with spreadsheets, supply audits, and contingency trees branching into the millions.
"Arrowheads are cycling readiness without drawing attention," an aide reported. "G.A.M.B.I.T. crews rotating under standard training cover."
Jimmy nodded. "Good. Let the universe think we're boring."
He turned as Danny approached.
"You're not going to stop them," Jimmy said, not accusing, just stating.
"No," Danny replied. "I'm going to refuse them."
Jimmy raised an eyebrow. "Semantics?"
Danny shook his head. "They're expecting resistance. Or compliance. They're not expecting non-participation."
Jimmy considered that. "You're going to deny them the premise."
"Yes," Danny said. "I won't be their battery. I won't be their solution. And I won't fight them on terms that validate the idea that I'm a resource to be harvested."
Jimmy smiled faintly. "You've been reading my old memos."
"Somebody had to," Danny said dryly.
Elsewhere in the station, Elysara packed quietly.
Not weapons—she wasn't trained for that yet—but data slates, personal effects, things that mattered because they could be lost. She paused over a small carved token from her village, thumb brushing the worn edge.
Bones' voice echoed faintly in her memory—not commanding, not pleading.
Don't let them convince you that staying forever is the same as saving.
She closed her hand around the token and slipped it into her pack.
"I won't be your agent," she whispered to the empty room. "But I won't be blind either."
Shadeclaw's message came through moments later, brief and to the point.
If Terragorn moves openly, we hunt.
She sent a single word back.
Agreed.
On the Lupine homeworld, the Wolf King convened his war council beneath banners still singed from the recent invasion. The Wolf Queen stood at his side, gaze sharp, presence unyielding.
"They want to chain what cannot be owned," she said. "That is always how empires rot."
"We will not be part of it," the Wolf King replied. "But we will not pretend it isn't happening."
Shadeclaw knelt briefly before the throne, Mira beside him.
"If they come for Danny," Shadeclaw said, "they come through us."
The Wolf King inclined his head. "As pack."
Mira's shadows flared once, fierce and contained.
Far away, in a place where physics grew thin and intention mattered more than matter, Bones watched the board fill.
Six stones held by those who believed in systems.
One stone held by those who believed in control.
A creation dragon refusing both abandonment and domination.
A diluted heir learning the cost of seeing clearly.
A trickster nurturing a variable no one else understood yet.
Bones felt no urgency.
Urgency was for those who feared losing.
He had waited longer than this before.
"Go on," he murmured to the multiverse. "Show me who you become when there's no clean answer left."
The cycle tightened.
Not toward an ending.
Toward a moment when everyone involved would have to admit that the hardest part of responsibility wasn't power—
It was choosing to stay present when leaving would be easier.
And somewhere, just beyond the reach of anyone watching too closely, the seventh stone pulsed once.
Not in warning.
In anticipation.