Time meant nothing to Dragons.
That was the conclusion Danny kept circling back to as he stood once more at the edge of the Dragon Realm's council chamber, watching deliberation grind forward with geological patience. Arguments rose, curved, folded back into themselves, then resurfaced hours later dressed in new language but carrying the same refusal to act.
No one denied the problem anymore.
That, at least, had changed.
Bones existed. Responsibility existed. The sealed realm was no longer sealed in spirit, even if it remained intact in structure.
But Dragons did not hurry toward solutions.
They orbited them.
Aurixal floated at the chamber's center, listening more than speaking, allowing the council to exhaust itself into honesty. Vaelthysra challenged every proposal that implied compromise. Kryndor refined counterpoints with surgical precision, framing delay as prudence, caution as wisdom.
Danny stayed silent.
Not because he lacked words.
Because he understood now that words were not what slowed Dragons down.
They believed time would eventually bend to their comfort.
Aurixal noticed Danny's stillness and drifted closer, voice low enough that only Danny could hear it.
"They are not refusing," Aurixal said. "They are acclimating."
"To responsibility?" Danny asked.
Aurixal's mouth curved faintly. "To the idea that they cannot avoid it."
Danny nodded. "That still takes too long."
Aurixal did not disagree.
"Your world does not have the luxury we do," Aurixal said. "It bleeds in real time."
"Yes," Danny replied simply. "That's why I stayed there."
Aurixal studied him for a long moment. "And why you frighten them."
Danny turned his gaze back to the council. "Then they should hurry."
Aurixal did not answer.
But the light in the chamber shifted again, imperceptibly faster than before.
Across the multiverse, B.U.D.D.I.E.S. HQ did something Dragons never would.
It stopped working.
Not entirely. Not irresponsibly. But deliberately.
Jimmy stood at the center of the primary atrium, hands on his hips, surveying a sight that would have horrified any efficiency committee and delighted exactly one cosmic custodian.
Long tables stretched end to end, stacked high with waffles—thousands of them. Some simple. Some layered with fruit, syrups, creams, and strange interdimensional toppings that defied classification. Steam rose in warm, fragrant waves.
Agents stared in disbelief.
"You're telling me," Julian said slowly, "that this is official?"
Jimmy nodded. "Absolutely."
"For what reason?"
Jimmy gestured broadly. "All seven sigil stones are under one roof. We're alive. The universe hasn't ended today. That's banquet-worthy."
Julian squinted. "Is this also an excuse to eat waffles?"
Jimmy looked offended. "This is a reason to eat waffles."
Laughter rippled through the atrium—tentative at first, then freer. Tension eased. Shoulders relaxed. People sat. Plates filled.
For a brief window, no one was fighting gods or chasing extinction.
They were just eating.
Jake leaned back in his chair, mouth full. "I forgot what normal feels like."
Swift nodded, silver eyes soft. "Yeah. Me too."
Elysara watched it all quietly, hands folded around a simple plate, absorbing the way B.U.D.D.I.E.S. functioned when it wasn't in crisis. There was no reverence here. No perfection.
Just people choosing to pause together.
Jimmy caught her watching and raised his mug in salute.
"Never underestimate morale," he said. "Or carbohydrates."
She smiled faintly.
The pause didn't last.
It never did.
Elysara was the one who broke the calm, datapad appearing in her hands as her expression sharpened.
"I've got movement," she said.
Danny wasn't there, but the room still shifted around her voice.
"Golden Dragon remnants," Elysara continued. "Diluted bloodlines. Scattered. Mostly unaware of what they are."
Jade straightened. "Dark Buddies?"
"Yes," Elysara said. "They're hunting them. Not to use them."
"To erase them," Swift finished quietly.
Jake swore under his breath.
Jimmy's humor vanished instantly. "How many?"
"Too many," Elysara replied. "And they're spread thin."
Jimmy nodded once. "Then we don't wait."
Orders moved fast.
Extraction teams assembled. Tracking arrays recalibrated. For the first time since Danny entered the Dragon Realm, B.U.D.D.I.E.S. acted without him—not in defiance, but in alignment with what he represented.
Responsibility didn't pause for gods.
In the Lupine Empire, the war changed shape.
The Dark Buddy invasion no longer advanced. It collapsed inward.
Wolf King strategy—relentless, adaptive, merciless—had finally cornered the enemy. Supply lines shattered. Retreat vectors severed. Planetary defenses reclaimed one by one.
Now, only a three-planet sector remained.
A scorched triangle of worlds stripped nearly bare by conquest.
And on the central planet—
All three Dark Buddy commanders were present.
Gralmar Duskwrought.
Draven Mor'gash.
Grothar Nightrender.
The Wolf King stood before a holographic projection of the sector, arms crossed, flame barely contained beneath his fur.
"They're boxed in," Shadeclaw said. "They know it."
"Yes," the Wolf King growled. "And that makes them dangerous."
Mira's eyes narrowed. "Cornered beasts don't surrender."
"No," the Wolf King agreed. "They burn."
He turned toward the assembled Lupine commanders.
"Prepare the hunt," he said. "We end this here."
Far away, Bones said nothing.
He felt the shifts. The tracking. The tightening noose around his commanders.
But he did not intervene.
Not yet.
Because while mortals hurried, and Wolves hunted, and B.U.D.D.I.E.S. saved what remnants they could—
The Dragons still debated.
And Bones had learned long ago that the slowest decisions often caused the greatest damage.
He waited.
The first remnant was found on a backwater moon that didn't even merit a name in most star charts.
It orbited a red dwarf that flickered unpredictably, its surface battered by centuries of solar instability and neglect. The settlement there had grown out of stubbornness rather than design—low structures reinforced with scrap alloy and local stone, clustered tight against the cold. Nothing about it suggested destiny.
That was the point.
Elysara felt the pull before the scanners confirmed it. Not a call—never that—but a faint harmonic mismatch in the local reality field, like a note slightly out of tune with the rest of existence.
"There," she said quietly.
The extraction team moved fast.
They found the remnant in a mechanic's bay beneath a collapsed transport rig—a man in his forties with oil-stained hands and tired eyes, cursing softly as he tried to coax life out of a power coupler that had failed one too many times.
He looked up when the door blew inward.
Instinctively, his body reacted.
Not with fire.
Not with light.
With endurance.
The blast washed over him and bent around his frame, dispersing harmlessly into the walls.
The Dark Buddy strike team froze.
They hadn't expected resistance.
Jade didn't give them time to recover.
Chi thundered through the narrow space as he tore through the first two attackers, bones cracking with concussive finality. Swift and Jake followed, coordinated and ruthless, while Bumble sealed the exits with improvised barriers that hardened instantly under pressure.
The remnant stared in stunned silence.
Elysara stepped forward slowly, hands raised. "You're not in trouble."
The man swallowed. "You just killed three people in my shop."
"They were here to kill you," Jade said flatly.
That landed harder.
The Dark Buddies didn't retreat cleanly. They never did. One managed to detonate a suppression charge before Swift severed him mid-motion. The explosion rattled the bay, tearing metal free and throwing everyone sideways.
The remnant didn't move.
The shockwave parted around him again.
Jake noticed. "Yeah. That tracks."
When it was over, the mechanic sat heavily against the wall, staring at his hands like they'd betrayed him.
"What am I?" he asked hoarsely.
Elysara knelt in front of him. "Someone who stayed."
Across the sector, similar scenes played out.
A schoolteacher on a water world whose classroom collapsed inward during an ambush—only for the pressure to refuse to crush her.
A dockworker who instinctively shielded his children as fire rained down, the flames bending just enough to leave them untouched.
None of them breathed fire.
None of them roared.
They endured.
And the Dark Buddies were erasing them methodically.
Because alternatives were dangerous.
In the Dragon Realm, Danny felt every loss like a pulled thread.
Not individually.
Collectively.
A pressure behind his sternum that deepened with each delayed vote, each philosophical sidestep. He paced now, no longer content to remain still as councils debated semantics while people died.
Aurixal noticed.
"You are pulling against the realm," Aurixal said quietly as they stood near the edge of the chamber.
"Yes," Danny replied. "Because it's pulling away from reality."
Aurixal's wings shifted uneasily. "We cannot act without consensus."
Danny turned sharply. "Then you're choosing absence again."
Aurixal did not argue.
Because this time, it was true.
On the central planet of the three-system pocket, the Dark Buddy commanders gathered.
The world was a dead husk—stripped bare, atmosphere thinned to a poisonous haze, its surface carved into trenches and fortresses layered atop one another in brutal efficiency.
Gralmar Duskwrought stood at the center of the war chamber, massive even among his kind, half-orc and half-giant muscle bound in entropy-warped armor that drank light. His tusked jaw tightened as reports scrolled past.
"They're closing," he growled.
Draven Mor'gash leaned against a pillar nearby, lithe by comparison, blades resting casually at his sides. His eyes flicked across the data with cold amusement. "Good. Saves us the trouble of chasing them."
Grothar Nightrender cracked his knuckles, the sound echoing like breaking stone. "Let them come. I want to see if the Wolf King bleeds like the rest."
Gralmar slammed a fist into the table, the impact warping the surface. "This is not a duel. This is survival."
Draven's smile thinned. "Then perhaps we should stop pretending we're here to win."
Silence followed.
"You feel it too," Draven continued softly. "Bones is… distant."
Grothar snarled. "He's always distant."
"No," Draven replied. "He's quiet."
Gralmar's eyes darkened. "Which means we're expendable."
That truth settled heavily.
Draven straightened. "Then we make ourselves too costly to discard."
The Wolf King felt the shift in the hunt.
Enemy movements grew sharper. More desperate. No longer probing—preparing.
"They know," Shadeclaw said.
"Yes," the Wolf King replied. "They always do at the end."
Mira's gaze flicked to the stars. "Then we finish it."
Back on the backwater moon, the extraction team lifted off under fire, the mechanic—now a remnant—silent in the jump seat, eyes hollow with shock.
Elysara watched him carefully.
"They stayed," the man said suddenly. "Didn't they?"
She nodded. "Yes."
"And the others left."
"Yes."
He laughed bitterly. "Figures."
The ship lurched into hyperspace.
Another life saved.
Another too late.
The war didn't slow.
It accelerated.
Because while gods debated and commanders entrenched and Dark Buddies hunted the forgotten—
The Wolves were closing their jaws.
And Danny, standing alone in a realm of perfection, was running out of patience.
The Wolves did not announce the encirclement.
They felt it.
Across the three-planet sector, Dark Buddy sensors began reporting the same anomaly from different vectors—pack signatures overlapping, cutting off retreat lanes not with blockades but with presence. Supply convoys vanished. Forward scouts stopped reporting in. Entire battalions went silent without triggering a single distress call.
The Wolf King did not press all at once.
He tightened.
Planet by planet, orbit by orbit, he let the net draw smaller, forcing the enemy inward toward the scorched central world where the commanders waited. Every move denied the Dark Buddies rest. Every hesitation cost them ground. Wolves harried them relentlessly, striking where morale thinned, withdrawing before retaliation could solidify.
Hunting.
Not war.
Shadeclaw moved through it like a shadow given intent, Mira at his side, their coordination so precise it bordered on prescient. Where Dark Buddy officers attempted to rally troops, they vanished. Where communication nodes flared to life, they died seconds later.
Fear spread faster than fire.
"They're panicking," Mira said over the comms, voice steady even as plasma fire streaked past her position.
"They should," the Wolf King replied. "Cornered predators become reckless. Reckless predators make mistakes."
—
On the central world, the commanders felt it closing in.
Gralmar Duskwrought stood before the planetary holomap, its surface now crowded with warning markers. His massive shoulders were tense, armor humming as it compensated for the ambient entropy saturating the atmosphere.
"This was supposed to break them," he snarled. "Not focus them."
Draven Mor'gash paced slowly around the chamber, blades whispering softly as they shifted against their sheaths. "It did both," he said. "We just underestimated how Wolves respond to pressure."
Grothar Nightrender slammed a fist into the wall, the impact fracturing stone. "Enough waiting. We take the fight to them."
Gralmar turned on him. "And leave the planet?"
Grothar's tusked grin was savage. "Let them think we're fleeing. Then we turn and—"
"No," Draven interrupted. "They want us angry. Predictable. They want us to charge."
Grothar glared at him. "Then what?"
Draven's eyes flicked toward the upper atmosphere, where faint distortions hinted at unseen movement. "Then we make them come to us."
Gralmar's gaze hardened. "Bones won't intervene."
"No," Draven agreed quietly. "Which means this ends with us."
The truth settled like a blade between them.
—
In the Dragon Realm, Danny finally stopped pacing.
He stood before Aurixal, golden flame flickering not in anger but in strain.
"They're dying while you argue," Danny said.
Aurixal did not deny it. "Yes."
"You feel it too," Danny pressed. "The remnants. The Wolves. The pressure building."
"Yes."
"Then act," Danny said.
Aurixal's wings shifted, the movement heavy. "If we move without consensus—"
"—then you stay," Danny finished. "Instead of leaving again."
Aurixal regarded him for a long moment, then turned toward the council chamber where debate still churned.
"You are asking us to choose imperfection knowingly," Aurixal said.
Danny nodded. "For the first time."
Aurixal closed his eyes.
When he opened them, the realm around them responded—not dramatically, but decisively. Light condensed. Pathways aligned. A signal rippled outward, subtle but unmistakable.
A pause.
A halt.
The council felt it.
Debate slowed, then stilled—not silenced by authority, but interrupted by necessity.
Aurixal spoke, his voice carrying across the realm.
"We will not resolve everything today," he said. "But we will no longer delay action in the name of comfort."
Vaelthysra hissed sharply, but did not object.
Kryndor watched, expression unreadable.
Aurixal turned back to Danny. "You have our attention."
Danny exhaled slowly.
"That's all I needed," he said.
—
Back in the Lupine sector, the Wolf King gave the order.
"All packs," he growled. "Close."
The Wolves surged inward.
Orbital defenses flared as Dark Buddy fleets attempted to break out, only to be met by coordinated Lupine strikes that tore through engines and command bridges with surgical precision. On the ground, shock troops advanced through ash and ruin, howls echoing across dead cities as the final battlefield took shape.
The Dark Buddy commanders stood together now at the heart of it, the planet trembling beneath distant bombardment.
"This is it," Gralmar said.
Grothar cracked his neck, grinning. "About time."
Draven's gaze flicked upward as the first Wolf transports pierced the cloud cover. "Let's make them remember us."
—
In the extraction corridor of a refugee vessel far from the fighting, Elysara watched the rescued remnants settle into temporary safety—faces exhausted, eyes haunted, but alive.
She felt Danny then.
Not his presence.
His choice.
"They're moving," she whispered.
The war was tipping.
The Dragons were listening.
And Bones, quiet and growing somewhere in the dark, waited to see which responsibility would arrive first—
The one that caged him.
Or the one that brought him home.
The first howl reached the planet before the ships did.
It rolled across the ash plains like thunder dragged low, vibrating through broken rock and skeletal ruins, slipping into tunnels and command bunkers and the marrow of those who heard it. It wasn't a challenge.
It was a declaration.
The Wolves were here.
Drop-ships punched through the cloud cover in staggered waves, hulls scorched and bristling with point-defense fire. Lupine banners burned bright against the polluted sky, sigils flaring as shock troops launched before the ships even finished decelerating. They hit the ground running—literally—packs spreading out in fluid arcs, adapting instantly to terrain that had been shaped by destruction.
The Dark Buddies met them with artillery and mines, turning whole stretches of ground into firestorms.
The Wolves ran through it anyway.
The Wolf King descended last.
He did not drop from orbit.
He fell.
Flame wrapped his massive frame as he tore through the sky, impact shattering the bedrock beneath him in a crater of molten stone. He rose from it slowly, towering, eyes burning with feral intelligence as the battle bent instinctively around him.
Every Wolf felt it.
Every Dark Buddy feared it.
"Advance," the Wolf King growled—not over comms, but through something deeper. "No retreat."
Shadeclaw and Mira struck first among the commanders' outer defenses, slicing through elite guards with terrifying efficiency. Shadow and fang moved as one—Mira's new form flowing between strikes, Shadeclaw's presence bending darkness around them like a weaponized silence.
They did not roar.
They ended.
Grothar Nightrender was the first to engage.
He burst from the fortress gates in a storm of stone and fury, massive hammer ripping through a pack of Wolves before the Wolf King intercepted him mid-swing. The collision sent a shockwave across the battlefield, flattening debris and bodies alike.
Grothar laughed. "There you are!"
The Wolf King answered with claws.
They tore into each other with brutal force—hammer against fang, fire against raw annihilation. Grothar was monstrously strong, each blow warping the ground, but the Wolf King was relentless. Every strike learned. Every counter sharpened.
"This empire will fall!" Grothar roared.
The Wolf King drove him backward, teeth bared. "It already rose."
Nearby, Gralmar Duskwrought waded into the fray like a living siege engine, entropy armor screaming as it absorbed punishment and returned it tenfold. Wolves fell under his advance—but they did not break.
They slowed him.
Draven Mor'gash moved differently.
He didn't charge.
He slipped.
Blades flashed in the chaos, cutting throats, severing tendons, sowing confusion wherever Wolves tried to regroup. He fought like a thought made violent, always just out of reach.
Until Shadeclaw found him.
Their clash was silent but deadly—shadow against precision, instinct against calculation. Mira joined seconds later, her new strength pushing Draven back for the first time.
He smiled even as blood splattered the ash.
"So," he murmured. "This is what staying creates."
—
Far from the battlefield, in the Dragon Realm, the council felt it.
Not the details.
The moment.
A convergence of consequence too loud to ignore.
Aurixal closed his eyes as the realm trembled faintly. "They are choosing."
Vaelthysra's voice was tight. "Mortals always do."
"Yes," Aurixal replied. "And so must we."
Kryndor watched the ripple with narrowed eyes, already recalculating.
—
Back on the battlefield, the Wolf King finally broke Grothar.
A crushing blow shattered the commander's armor, driving him to one knee. The Wolf King loomed over him, flames roaring, claws digging into cracked stone.
Grothar looked up, defiant even now. "Bones will finish this."
The Wolf King leaned closer, voice low and terrible. "He already failed you."
The final strike ended the question.
Across the field, Gralmar roared in fury as he felt Grothar fall. He surged forward, abandoning formation, only to be swarmed by Lupine forces and pinned under sheer weight and coordination.
Draven disengaged at the same moment, retreating toward the fortress core, bloodied but smiling.
"This isn't over," he whispered into the chaos.
He was right.
Because even as the Wolves closed in, and the commanders began to fall—
Danny felt it.
A tightening.
Not in the Lupine sector.
But elsewhere.
A subtle, dangerous quiet settling around Bones.
He wasn't intervening.
He was withdrawing.
Preparing.
The war was tipping.
But the story was far from finished.
Because responsibility had finally started moving—
And when it did, it pulled everything with it.
The battlefield did not quiet when Grothar fell.
It shifted.
Where there had been chaos, there was now direction. The Wolves pressed harder, their movements tightening into coordinated arcs that boxed the remaining Dark Buddy forces inward toward the fortress core. The air itself seemed to carry momentum—howls echoing through shattered spires, flames licking across broken battlements as Lupine strike teams advanced with ruthless precision.
Gralmar Duskwrought refused to fall easily.
Pinned beneath a mass of Wolves, his entropy armor screamed as it devoured kinetic force and spat it back out in violent pulses. Bodies were thrown aside like debris. He surged upright with a roar, grabbing one Wolf mid-leap and crushing him against the stone.
"YOU THINK THIS ENDS ME?" Gralmar bellowed.
The Wolf King answered by hitting him again.
This time, not alone.
A full pack struck in unison—claws, blades, plasma, and fire converging in a single devastating moment. Gralmar staggered, armor cracking, entropy leaking like black smoke from ruptured seams. He dropped to one knee, snarling through broken tusks.
"Bones will remember this," he spat.
The Wolf King stepped forward, eyes burning. "So will we."
The finishing blow was not theatrical.
It was final.
Across the battlefield, a ripple passed through the Dark Buddy ranks as Gralmar's life winked out. Some fought harder. Others broke entirely. Retreat signals flared—and died—as Wolves severed escape routes with brutal efficiency.
Only one commander remained.
Draven Mor'gash watched the collapse from the fortress balcony, blood trailing down one arm, expression almost serene. He sheathed one blade slowly, deliberately.
"Well," he murmured, "that was educational."
Shadeclaw emerged from the shadows behind him without sound.
Draven didn't turn. "You know," he said lightly, "if circumstances were different, I might've enjoyed working with you."
Shadeclaw's voice was cold. "You enjoy nothing that lasts."
Draven smiled. "Perhaps."
He pivoted suddenly, blades flashing—but Mira was already there, intercepting the strike with a snarl, shadow and silver colliding in a burst of force that shattered the balcony railing.
Draven skidded backward, barely keeping his footing as the Wolves closed in below.
"You've already lost," Mira growled.
Draven's gaze flicked toward the sky, where Lupine ships now dominated orbit. He nodded once, as if confirming a calculation.
"Yes," he agreed. "Here."
And then he leapt.
Not toward escape—but toward the heart of the fortress.
Explosions rippled seconds later as Draven triggered pre-laid charges, collapsing entire sections of the structure and burying himself under tons of reinforced stone and molten debris.
Silence followed.
Not victory.
Aftermath.
The Wolf King stood amid the ruin, chest heaving, flames dimming to embers as reports flooded in. The invasion force was shattered. Survivors were fleeing or surrendering. The Lupine Empire held.
For now.
Shadeclaw joined him, Mira close at his side. "The commanders are down."
"Yes," the Wolf King said. "But not the threat."
He lifted his gaze toward the stars.
Elsewhere.
Danny felt the same moment from a world away.
The Wolves had won.
But Bones had not acted.
That worried him more than any open strike.
In the Dragon Realm, Aurixal felt it too—the sudden absence where resistance should have been.
"Something has changed," Vaelthysra said sharply.
Kryndor's eyes gleamed faintly. "Yes," he murmured. "Bones is adapting."
Aurixal turned toward the sealed edge of the realm, expression grave. "Then our time for deliberation is ending."
Danny clenched his fists, creation flame stirring instinctively.
"Good," he said.
Because while wars could be won with claws and fire—
What came next would require something far harder.
Gods choosing to stay.
Victory tasted wrong.
That was the thought that lingered as the smoke thinned over the broken world and the Wolves began the grim work that followed any hunt worth remembering. Wounded were pulled from rubble. The dead were marked. The living enemy—those who surrendered or were too broken to flee—were bound and stripped of weapons, their defiance drained by the sudden absence of command.
The Lupine Empire had survived.
But survival was never the same thing as safety.
The Wolf King stood at the highest remaining point of the fortress, surveying the ruin with eyes that had seen too many endings to celebrate easily. The fire in his chest had cooled, leaving behind a familiar ache—one he associated with responsibility more than rage.
"They came for annihilation," Mira said quietly beside him. "They found resistance."
Shadeclaw said nothing, gaze fixed on the shattered stone where Draven had disappeared. He could feel it—no pulse, no presence, no echo. If the commander lived, he was buried too deeply to matter now.
For now.
"The invasion is broken," one of the Lupine commanders reported, bowing low. "Remaining Dark Buddy forces are retreating from the sector."
The Wolf King nodded once. "Pursue only to secure our borders. No overreach."
The commander hesitated. "And the wider war?"
The Wolf King's jaw tightened. "That is not finished on this battlefield."
Light-years away, B.U.D.D.I.E.S. extraction teams completed their last known rescue of the cycle.
The final remnant—a woman barely old enough to understand what had been taken from her—sat wrapped in a thermal cloak aboard a transport, staring at the stars with eyes that reflected something deeper than fear.
"How many of us are left?" she asked Elysara softly.
Elysara didn't lie. "Enough."
The girl nodded, not because she believed it, but because she needed to.
As the ship jumped to hyperspace, Elysara closed her eyes and reached—not outward, but inward—feeling the thread that connected her to Danny. It wasn't distance that separated them.
It was pace.
Back in the Dragon Realm, the council chamber was quieter now.
Not resolved.
But focused.
Aurixal stood at the center again, wings folded, presence steady in a way that communicated finality without force.
"The Wolves have prevailed," he said. "The remnants have been preserved."
Vaelthysra's voice was sharp. "And Bones remains untouched."
"Yes," Aurixal replied. "By choice."
Murmurs stirred again—unease, suspicion, frustration.
"He retreats because he can," one councilor said. "He waits because time favors him."
Danny stepped forward before Aurixal could respond.
"Time only favors those who abandon responsibility," Danny said. "You taught him that."
The chamber stilled.
"This war doesn't end when the enemy retreats," Danny continued. "It ends when someone decides to stay with the consequences of creation."
Kryndor's gaze flicked toward him, thoughtful. "And you believe that someone is us."
Danny met his eyes evenly. "You believe it too. You're just afraid of what it costs."
Aurixal raised a wing—not to silence, but to conclude.
"The deliberation ends here," he said.
That statement landed harder than any roar.
"We will act," Aurixal continued. "Not perfectly. Not eternally. But responsibly."
Vaelthysra inhaled sharply. Kryndor did not object.
The Dragon Realm shifted—not dramatically, but decisively—structures aligning, dormant pathways awakening, ancient systems stirring that had not been touched since the sealing.
Danny felt it.
They weren't done deciding.
But they had stopped hiding.
In the quiet between stars, Bones drifted through the aftermath of a thousand small destructions, feeding carefully, patiently.
The Wolves had won their war.
The Dragons had chosen to engage again.
And the remnants had survived.
Bones smiled.
Because none of that stopped what came next.
It only ensured that when the cage finally closed again—temporary, imperfect, breathing—
There would be someone on the other side listening.
And this time, the whisper would matter.
The universe had started moving faster than its gods preferred.
And once momentum returned—
It never slowed politely.