Danny did not choose the moment because it was safe.
He chose it because it was honest.
B.U.D.D.I.E.S. Headquarters never truly slept. Even in the station's lowest traffic cycle, there were always corridors humming with transit carts, always someone hurrying with a tablet tucked under their arm, always engineers with grease on their knuckles and quiet curses in their mouths as they crawled through maintenance bays that had been patched more times than they could count. Somewhere, always, an alarm was being tested. Somewhere, always, a system was being recalibrated.
Life did not pause here—not for grief, not for celebration, not for fear.
Danny had learned to love that about it.
He stood at the edge of one of the older observation rings, a place that was not designed for command meetings or official broadcasts. It was a narrow crescent of reinforced glass and dark steel overlooking a slice of stars that felt less curated than the grand galleries near Central Operations. This ring belonged to the working spine of the station. It had scratches in the railing where people leaned too hard. It had a faint dent in one support strut where an overconfident builder bot had misjudged a turn decades ago. The lights were a touch warmer here, less clinical.
Elysara had found this place first.
She stood with her hands clasped behind her back, posture straight as royalty, long golden-white hair braided thickly down her spine to the small of her back. The braid caught the light with a soft sheen, pale gold woven through white like sunlight trapped in snow. Her skin looked almost luminous against the darker metal around them, and her eyes—sharp purple flecked with gold—held the kind of quiet attention that made most rooms rearrange themselves around her without her asking.
She had never needed a throne to look like she belonged on one.
Danny watched her for a long moment before she turned.
"You're pacing," she said.
Danny paused mid-step and exhaled, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I didn't realize."
"You're loud when you're thinking," Elysara said, and there was amusement there, but not teasing. Something gentler.
Danny stepped closer, stopping an arm's length away. He could smell faint traces of the station on her—sterile air, warm metal, a hint of ozone from a corridor that had been recently repaired. But beneath that there was something else: forest memory, the kind that clung to someone who had once lived where the wind was not filtered through vents.
Nilbarx in her bones.
He had saved her because he could not ignore the call of a distant bloodline. That had been the first truth.
The second truth was harder.
He had not expected her to remain. To choose the storm instead of retreating from it.
Yet she had.
Elysara's gaze searched his face. "What is it?"
Danny looked past her, through the glass, out at the stars. Somewhere out there was Bones—quiet now, patient, rebuilding. Somewhere out there were systems learning to endure and the Outer Rims learning to argue instead of surrender. Somewhere out there, Sareth Nevermore was whispering into the exhaustion of caretakers and the righteous fury of the wounded.
Somewhere out there, the universe was holding its breath.
Danny had spent so long thinking like a weapon that he had nearly forgotten he was also a living thing.
"I've been measuring everything," he said quietly. "Risk. Timing. Probability. The cost of every choice."
Elysara nodded once, as if she already knew.
"And I realized," Danny continued, voice lower now, "that if I keep doing that… if I keep treating life like a strategy… then Bones wins even when we stop him."
Elysara's expression softened in a way that made her look younger for a heartbeat—less like a myth and more like a woman standing in a dim observation ring, facing someone who was trying not to break.
"What are you saying?" she asked.
Danny swallowed.
Creation stirred in him—not roaring, not burning, but steady. The kind of steady that felt like the first breath after nearly drowning.
"I'm saying that this war is going to last," Danny said. "Years. Decades. Maybe longer than any of us want to imagine. Bones is patient. His servants are patient. They don't just want to kill us. They want to make us stop believing that anything good is worth building."
Elysara's eyes narrowed slightly. "And you want to prove them wrong."
Danny nodded. "Not with speeches."
He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket—an ordinary human garment, worn more for familiarity than necessity—and pulled out something small enough to look almost ridiculous against the scale of what he was.
A ring.
It wasn't ornate. It wasn't drenched in gemstones. It was forged from a metal that looked simple at first glance, but if you stared too long you could see faint internal veining like living gold threaded through silver—creation flame cooled into permanence. It held a single crystal at its center, not cut for sparkle but for depth, shifting subtly as the light hit it. Purple flecks in a gold-hazed core.
A small echo of her eyes.
Elysara's breath caught—just slightly, just enough that Danny heard it.
He turned the ring in his fingers once, grounding himself in the physical reality of it.
"I'm asking you," Danny said, and his voice tightened despite his efforts to keep it calm, "to marry me."
Elysara did not speak immediately.
For a heartbeat, the station sounds around them seemed to fall away—the distant hum of transit, the faint hiss of an airlock cycling somewhere, the muted thud of boots on deck plating.
Danny felt the familiar instinct to brace for rejection—not because he believed she would, but because his life had taught him that every good thing arrived with a blade hidden behind it.
Elysara stepped closer until there was no space left between them that didn't matter.
"You're doing this as defiance," she said softly.
Danny nodded. "Yes."
"And as truth," she added, studying him.
"Yes."
"And you know," she said, voice still calm, "that this paints a target on every descendant of your bloodline who comes near you."
Danny's jaw tightened. "Yes."
Elysara lifted a hand and placed it against his chest, palm over his heart, feeling the steady rhythm that proved he was still human enough to beat.
"Then you should also know," she said, "that I am not a symbol you can hold up and hope survives because of me."
Danny's throat went tight. "I know."
"I'm a person," she continued. "And if I marry you, I do it because I choose you—not because I want to be used as proof."
Danny's eyes met hers. "I want you. The proof is just what happens when we refuse to stop living."
Elysara stared at him for a long moment, then let out a soft breath—half laugh, half something that sounded suspiciously like relief.
"You are still learning how to be alive," she murmured.
Danny nodded. "I'm trying."
Elysara held out her hand.
Danny slid the ring onto her finger carefully, as if the act itself might shatter if he moved too quickly. It fit perfectly, the living veins inside the metal pulsing faintly once as it settled, as if recognizing its place.
Elysara looked down at it, then back up at him.
"Yes," she said simply.
Danny exhaled, and something inside him unclenched that he hadn't realized had been locked for years.
He leaned forward and kissed her—slow, steady, not desperate. The kiss did not erase the war. It did not change the stars beyond the viewport. But it made something undeniable.
They were still here.
They pulled apart and stood with foreheads nearly touching, breathing the same filtered air, sharing warmth that was stubbornly, beautifully physical.
"We'll need to tell Jimmy," Danny said quietly.
Elysara's smile sharpened with amusement. "He will try to host a waffle banquet."
"He already is," Danny replied, and for the first time in a long time, the humor in his voice did not feel forced.
The multiverse learned within hours.
Not because Danny broadcast it.
Because nothing stayed private at B.U.D.D.I.E.S. HQ for long, especially not joy. A medic saw Elysara's ring in a corridor and froze. A pilot's mouth dropped open. A cadet whispered it to another, and another, and then it hit the lower decks like a wave.
Danny felt it moving through the station like a pulse.
People smiled. Some cried. Some laughed at the absurdity of happiness daring to exist when Bones still breathed somewhere in the dark. Others scoffed, uneasy, as if love was irresponsible.
But the important thing was that they reacted.
The station did not stay numb.
Jimmy found Danny in Central Operations less than a cycle later, paperwork already in one hand and a half-eaten waffle in the other, syrup dangerously close to the edge.
He stopped short when he saw the ring on Elysara's hand.
Then he did something Danny had not seen him do in a long time.
Jimmy just stared.
"You did it," Jimmy breathed.
Danny shrugged with faint discomfort. "Apparently."
Jimmy blinked rapidly, as if trying not to get something in his eyes. "You absolute menace," he muttered, voice thick. "You know what this means?"
Danny nodded. "A target."
"A message," Jimmy corrected, stepping closer. "A big, loud, beautiful, bureaucratically catastrophic message."
Elysara arched an eyebrow. "Bureaucratically catastrophic?"
Jimmy gestured vaguely toward the station-wide planning network as if it were a living beast. "Do you have any idea what it takes to host an event that will draw the Wolves, the Buddies, your little circle of dragon-blood prodigies, and—" he paused, swallowing as if the words tasted strange "—and the Dragon Council?"
Danny's expression tightened. "They'll come?"
Jimmy's face sobered, waffle forgotten for the moment. "They sent a notice."
Elysara's eyes narrowed slightly. "A notice."
Jimmy nodded. "Formal. Unmistakable. Aurixal is leading it."
Danny felt something deep shift in his ribs—not surprise, exactly, but the strange ache of family you never got to meet deciding you mattered.
Aurixal.
Great-uncle in a bloodline stretched thin across epochs. The younger brother of a king who had chosen to stay behind and become human, while Aurixal had been taken with the withdrawing Dragons to a realm sealed from the rest of existence.
Danny had expected Dragons to move slow.
He had not expected them to move at all.
"What did they say?" Danny asked.
Jimmy's gaze flicked sideways, as if checking who might overhear, then back. "They said the Dragon Council will return to the multiverse for the first time in six thousand years to witness the union of their kin."
The words made the air feel heavier.
Danny pictured it instantly—dragons who had hidden from consequence stepping back into a universe still bleeding from the mistakes they left behind. Not as saviors. Not as conquerors.
As witnesses.
Witnesses could become judges.
Or allies.
Or obstacles.
It depended on what they remembered when they saw what their abandonment had created.
Elysara's fingers curled slightly as if she could feel the scale of what they had just triggered. "That will draw attention far beyond the Dark Buddies."
Jimmy gave her a look of grim respect. "Exactly."
Danny's jaw tightened. "Then we don't make it small. We make it honest."
Jimmy's eyes flicked to Danny's face. "You're really going through with this."
Danny nodded. "Yes."
Jimmy exhaled slowly. "Alright then."
The old cosmic custodian—the paperwork-loving time-stopper who had spent six thousand years building a bureaucratic shield around the multiverse—straightened and suddenly looked very much like the head of B.U.D.D.I.E.S.
"Then we do it properly," Jimmy said. "We plan security like it's war. We plan logistics like it's a migration. And we plan the ceremony like it's… like it's a middle finger made of love."
Elysara smiled faintly. "That's surprisingly poetic for someone holding syrup."
Jimmy looked down at his waffle, then back up. "I contain multiversal threats. I can contain feelings."
Danny almost laughed.
Almost.
Because somewhere, in the Outer Rims, Sareth Nevermore received the same news and did not react with laughter.
He reacted with stillness so complete it made his followers shrink back.
The House of Whispers gathered around him in silence as the report was delivered.
"The Creation Dragon has proposed," the acolyte whispered. "The dragon-elf accepts. The multiverse celebrates."
Sareth's eyes remained fixed on nothing, expression carved from cold stone.
A wedding.
Creation celebrating itself.
Not privately. Publicly. As message. As defiance. As proof that life could still produce joy even while death prowled the edges of existence.
It was obscene.
Not because it was immoral.
Because it was hopeful.
Sareth breathed in slowly, then out, as if steadying himself against the offense of it.
"He has turned love into a weapon," Sareth murmured.
The acolyte lowered his head. "Yes, my lord."
Sareth's voice became quieter, sharper. "And weapons can be broken."
He stood, movement slow, joints creaking softly, frailty wrapped around something far more dangerous than physical strength: conviction.
"We will not kill him," Sareth said.
The acolyte looked up, startled. "My lord?"
Sareth turned, hollow eyes gleaming. "If he dies, the myth grows. If he suffers, the myth hardens. But if what he celebrates becomes a graveyard—if creation's own descendants are slaughtered while it tries to smile—then the multiverse learns the only lesson that matters."
He stepped down from the dais, approaching the gathered acolytes like a shadow moving through shadow.
"That everything good is temporary," Sareth whispered, voice almost tender. "And everything bright is a target."
A hush filled the chamber.
"You will identify every remnant of Golden Dragon lineage," Sareth continued. "Every diluted descendant. Every hidden bloodline that might be drawn by curiosity, by kinship, by hope."
The acolyte swallowed. "And at the wedding…?"
Sareth's thin smile appeared, sharp as a blade.
"At the wedding," he said softly, "we will make a demonstration."
No roaring invasion.
No Dark Buddy fleet blotting out the stars.
Something quieter.
Sharper.
A massacre not of armies, but of meaning.
Sareth's followers bowed, fear and devotion tangled together.
The plan began immediately.
Agents slipped into registries. Into genealogical databases. Into refugee records. Into medical scans that flagged dormant dragon-blood markers. They compiled lists not to recruit, but to harvest.
Sareth did not need to convince the multiverse that hope was foolish.
He only needed to show it.
Bones' presence brushed against him then, faint and amused.
"You chose spectacle," Bones murmured.
Sareth bowed his head. "Creation is making spectacle of itself. I am merely answering."
Bones' silence lingered longer than usual—an absence that felt like thought.
Then, softly: "Proceed."
Sareth's eyes gleamed. "As you command."
Bones withdrew, content.
Because this was exactly what he wanted: a moment where expectation rose high enough that when it shattered, the shards would cut deep.
Back in the Dragon Realm, the council chamber filled with light as Aurixal called the ancient gathering to order.
It was not a grand hall full of roaring, living warmth.
It was immaculate.
Crystal architecture and geometric perfection. Air that smelled like nothing. Silence engineered.
Dragons moved through it like living statues, each one immense, each one flawless, each one carrying the weight of centuries without looking the least bit burdened by it.
Vaelthysra Drakenor's platinum form caught the light like a sharpened mirror, her eyes narrow and unimpressed even as reports of Danny's proposal flashed across projection lattices. Her voice cut through the chamber with practiced disdain.
"He plays at humanity," she said. "And now he plays at romance. This is beneath us."
Aurixal Tharandros—golden, calm, observant—did not flinch. "It is not beneath creation."
Kryndor Solathis stood near the edge, an obsidian-gold presence that seemed to drink in light rather than reflect it. His expression was composed, careful, as if every thought passed through layers of filtering before it reached his eyes.
"A public wedding is a risk," Kryndor said mildly. "And a statement."
Aurixal's gaze held steady. "Yes."
Vaelthysra's lip curled. "A statement that he is reckless."
"A statement," Aurixal corrected gently, "that he is alive."
The chamber went quiet.
Aurixal stepped forward, voice lowering slightly—not secretive, but intimate in a place that rarely allowed intimacy.
"Six thousand years," he said. "That is how long we have watched from behind sealed walls. Six thousand years of refusing to be touched by consequence."
Vaelthysra's eyes narrowed. "Consequence is a choice."
Aurixal nodded once. "So is abandonment."
The word landed like stone.
Kryndor's gaze flicked toward Aurixal, interest sharpening. "You would return."
Aurixal did not hesitate. "Yes."
Vaelthysra's wings twitched subtly, a sign of irritation. "To what end? To bless him? To indulge his primitive rituals?"
Aurixal's expression softened slightly—fondness, something almost painful. "To witness."
"To judge," Vaelthysra said sharply.
Aurixal's eyes remained calm. "To remember."
Kryndor tilted his head. "And if the multiverse expects us to intervene?"
Aurixal's voice stayed steady. "Then we will discover whether we still can."
That last sentence held more weight than the rest.
Because it acknowledged the fear none of them wanted to name:
They had become so removed from creation that even their power felt… theoretical.
They had perfected themselves into irrelevance.
Aurixal looked at the projection of Danny—human form, golden soul, a descendant of the clan that stayed behind and chose to live within creation rather than above it.
A distant nephew.
A living reminder.
"We go," Aurixal said, and his voice carried the authority of someone who had been council leader by consensus not because he conquered, but because he endured others' doubts long enough for them to see.
Vaelthysra's eyes flashed. "This is folly."
"Perhaps," Aurixal replied. "But it is movement."
Kryndor's thin smile appeared—barely there, quickly hidden. "Movement invites consequence."
Aurixal met his gaze. "Then let us finally be worthy of it."
The decision rippled through the realm like a crack in pristine crystal.
Preparations began.
Not with excitement.
With clinical precision.
Dragons did not pack bags or gather keepsakes. They assembled contingencies. Calculated trajectories. Assigned observation protocols. Their return to the multiverse was treated like an experiment—careful, monitored, controlled.
Aurixal felt the wrongness of that and carried it anyway.
Because even imperfect movement was better than eternal stillness.
Back at B.U.D.D.I.E.S. HQ, Danny stood with Elysara in the quiet observation ring again, her hand in his, the ring catching faint light.
"You started something," Elysara said softly.
Danny nodded. "We did."
Elysara's eyes lifted to the stars. "Do you regret it?"
Danny looked at her hand, at the living veins of gold within the metal, at the proof that creation could still craft something beautiful without needing permission.
"No," he said. "Even if it costs me."
Elysara's fingers tightened around his. "It will cost us."
Danny met her gaze. "Then we pay it together."
Somewhere in the Outer Rims, Sareth Nevermore's agents compiled lists of names that should have remained unknown. Somewhere in the Dragon Realm, ancient beings prepared to step back into consequence. Somewhere in the dark between ruined stars, Bones waited, amused and patient, knowing that weddings were not simply unions.
They were expectations.
And expectations, when shattered, could feed destruction for a very long time.
Danny didn't know the full shape of what was coming.
But he felt the tightening in the weave of reality, the way the universe leaned forward as if bracing.
He kissed Elysara's knuckles gently, reverent.
"We keep living," he murmured.
Elysara's smile was small, fierce. "We keep living."
And the multiverse—watching, whispering, hoping, fearing—began to prepare for a celebration that would not simply be a ceremony.
It would be a battleground of meaning.
Not yet.
But soon.