The preparations unfolded quietly at first, which somehow made them heavier.
Danny noticed it in the way conversations paused when he entered a room—not out of reverence, but recalibration. People adjusted their expectations mid-sentence. Engineers stopped joking halfway through a complaint. Cadets straightened without realizing why. The proposal had not made him untouchable; it had made him symbolic, and symbols carried weight whether they wanted to or not.
He hated that part.
Elysara noticed it too.
"They're not looking at you," she murmured one cycle later as they walked through a residential wing that smelled faintly of recycled water and fresh insulation. "They're looking at what you represent."
Danny exhaled slowly. "I never asked for that."
Elysara gave him a sidelong glance, eyes sharp but warm. "You didn't ask to be a Golden Dragon either."
That stopped him.
They kept walking, footsteps echoing softly. Somewhere above them, transport rails hummed. Somewhere below, someone laughed—a real laugh, sudden and unguarded. That sound mattered more than any strategy meeting Danny had attended in months.
He reached for Elysara's hand again, grounding himself in the fact that this was real. Not a message. Not a maneuver.
A choice.
Jimmy, meanwhile, had entered what the station logs would later describe as controlled chaos. He commandeered three administrative floors, rerouted five logistics AIs, and personally vetoed no fewer than eighteen attempts to turn the wedding into a spectacle.
"No floating banners," he snapped at a junior coordinator. "No anthem remixes. No commemorative plates. This is not a coronation."
"But sir," the coordinator protested weakly, "the Wolves—"
"The Wolves can bring their own culture," Jimmy said, rubbing his temples. "I am not coordinating cross-species pageantry while Bones is actively committing crimes against reality."
He paused, then added more quietly, "And while someone is definitely planning to turn this into a bloodbath."
That last part did not make it into the official planning notes.
Security briefings multiplied. Shadeclaw spent most cycles moving through shadows, listening more than speaking. He had stopped smiling entirely—not that many noticed. He felt the pattern tightening now, threads converging toward a single future event.
A convergence point.
"Too clean," he muttered to Mira as they reviewed movement data late one cycle. "Too quiet."
Mira—still adjusting to her shadow-wolf nature, still learning how silence could be as loud as sound—tilted her head. "You think it's the wedding."
"I know it is," Shadeclaw replied. "I just don't know how."
That uncertainty gnawed at him. He had lived most of his life as a weapon pointed in a single direction. Ambiguity was worse than danger.
Elsewhere, beyond the station, Sareth Nevermore reviewed the compiled lists with clinical satisfaction.
Names. Locations. Bloodline probabilities.
Not all were strong. Most were barely noticeable—descendants so diluted that even Danny might not sense them at first glance. That was the point. They represented what creation became when it chose continuity over purity.
Sareth despised them.
"These are not dragons," one lieutenant whispered, unease creeping into his voice.
Sareth's eyes flicked up, cold and assessing. "They are mistakes the universe insists on repeating."
He turned back to the projection, skeletal fingers steepled. "And mistakes must be corrected."
The plan required patience. Timing. Subtlety.
He would not strike first.
He would let the universe gather its hope.
Then he would teach it what hope always cost.
Back in the Dragon Realm, the Council's preparations continued with unnerving efficiency. Dragons did not debate logistics—they simulated outcomes. Probability trees unfurled across crystalline displays. Every possible variable was cataloged, evaluated, stripped of emotional context.
Vaelthysra watched it all with visible disdain.
"This is absurd," she said, tail flicking irritably. "We are dragons, not diplomats."
Aurixal did not look away from the projection of the multiverse slowly resolving into clearer detail. "We are witnesses," he replied. "For once."
Kryndor stood nearby, hands folded, eyes unreadable. "Witnesses become participants whether they intend to or not."
Aurixal's voice softened. "That is the risk of returning."
A pause.
"You care for him," Kryndor said quietly.
Aurixal did not deny it. "He is blood. And more than that—he is proof that what stayed behind did not rot."
Kryndor's lips curved faintly. "Or proof that it did."
Aurixal turned then, golden eyes sharp. "Be careful, Kryndor."
Kryndor inclined his head in mock deference. "Always."
In the space between ruined stars, Bones shifted his awareness slightly, tasting the movement of plans layered atop plans. He felt Sareth's intent. Felt the Dragons stirring. Felt Danny's decision ripple outward, stubborn and bright.
Creation was loud again.
"How inconvenient," Bones murmured without irritation.
He did not intervene.
Not yet.
Because something far more interesting was happening: the universe was choosing meaning over efficiency. And meaning, when wounded, bled far more energy than despair ever did.
Bones smiled to himself.
Let them celebrate.
Let them prepare.
Let them believe that choosing love was a shield.
He would show them it was merely another opening.
And Danny—standing at the viewport with Elysara, watching ships trace lines of light through the dark—felt the tightening coil of inevitability without knowing its shape.
He did not mistake that feeling for fear.
It was resolve sharpening.
"Whatever comes," he said quietly, fingers laced with hers, "we don't stop."
Elysara squeezed his hand, eyes reflecting stars and something fiercer beneath them. "No," she agreed. "We don't."
The universe leaned closer.
Not in anticipation of destruction.
But in anticipation of what would be tested next.
The test did not arrive with alarms.
That was what unsettled Danny most as the cycles passed.
No sudden surge of Dark Buddy traffic. No catastrophic signal spikes. No desperate calls from the Outer Rims. The universe did not scream. It whispered. And whispers were harder to fight because they blended so easily into the background noise of existence.
The wedding preparations continued anyway.
Not lavish. Not grand in the way ancient empires would have demanded. Jimmy vetoed anything that felt like a throne room masquerading as a chapel. What remained was deliberate simplicity: a wide open ceremonial platform anchored to the station's outer ring, transparent shielding arching overhead to reveal the stars without exposing anyone to vacuum. The platform was large enough to hold hundreds, yet intentionally left bare—no banners, no monuments, no symbols except those people brought with them.
Creation without ornament.
Elysara approved immediately.
"This feels honest," she said as she walked the platform with Danny, footsteps echoing faintly against the composite stone. "No one can mistake it for dominance."
Danny nodded. "Good. I don't want anyone kneeling."
"You will still make them," Elysara replied gently.
He frowned. "I don't want—"
"I know," she interrupted, smiling faintly. "But you forget what hope does to people. They kneel because they need something to stand up for."
Danny absorbed that in silence.
He had always been wary of hope wielded carelessly. He had seen it turned into justification, into blind faith, into cruelty. But what Elysara spoke of wasn't that kind of hope.
It was directional.
It pointed somewhere.
That scared him more than despair ever had.
Shadeclaw returned from another long reconnaissance cycle with tension etched into every line of his posture. He said little at first, just stood in the operations bay staring at a projection that showed nothing overtly wrong.
"That's the problem," Jake said finally, leaning against a crate while Bumble clung upside-down to a railing, clicking softly. "It's empty."
Shadeclaw nodded. "Too empty."
Swift folded his arms. "Sareth?"
"Not directly," Shadeclaw replied. "This isn't his usual pattern. He's not destabilizing infrastructure. He's not undermining leadership. He's… curating."
Mira stiffened. "Curating what?"
"People," Shadeclaw said quietly. "Bloodlines. Individuals who won't register as strategic losses but will register emotionally."
Danny felt a chill settle along his spine.
Golden Dragon descendants.
Not warriors. Not champions. Ordinary lives carrying diluted echoes of creation.
Families.
"Can we move them?" Swift asked.
Shadeclaw shook his head slowly. "Not without revealing the pattern. And once revealed, it accelerates."
Danny closed his eyes briefly, breathing through the frustration. This was the shape of it—the kind of threat you couldn't punch or burn away. Protection required exposure. Exposure invited escalation.
Creation was messy.
"So what do we do?" Jake asked.
Danny opened his eyes. "We don't cancel."
Everyone turned toward him.
"We don't hide," Danny continued, voice steady. "And we don't let fear turn this into something smaller than it's meant to be."
Shadeclaw studied him. "You're certain."
Danny nodded. "This is the line. If we retreat now, Sareth wins without lifting a blade."
Mira stepped closer, shadowed eyes searching his face. "And if he strikes?"
Danny met her gaze. "Then we show the multiverse what happens when destruction tries to turn love into a weakness."
No one argued.
Because they could feel it too: the war had crossed a threshold where restraint itself was now a weapon.
Far from the station, in a sanctum carved from obsidian and bone, Sareth Nevermore prepared.
He did not revel in violence. That was a common misunderstanding among his followers. He viewed killing as instruction. A language the universe had always understood.
He reviewed projections of the ceremonial platform, the attendance probabilities, the arrival vectors of the Dragon Council. He marked potential choke points not for military advantage, but for symbolism.
He chose restraint deliberately.
No mass casualty event.
No apocalyptic spectacle.
Just enough blood to stain the meaning of the moment forever.
"Creation teaches through repetition," Sareth murmured to himself. "So will we."
He dispatched his agents with quiet precision.
Bones observed all of it with distant interest, neither approving nor disapproving. This was not his hand moving—it was Sareth's. Delegation was efficient. Delegation created plausible deniability.
If the plan failed, it would still weaken creation by exposing its vulnerability.
If it succeeded…
Bones' presence coiled slightly tighter in the dark.
He would feed for a long time.
Back on the station, Jimmy stood alone in the ceremonial space long after the others had left, staring up through the shielding at the stars. He rubbed his hands together absently, waffle crumbs long since brushed away.
"I hate this part," he muttered to no one. "The quiet before someone decides they've earned the right to ruin things."
He straightened, squared his shoulders, and activated a private channel.
"All departments," Jimmy said calmly. "Final security posture stands. No escalation unless absolutely necessary. This is a wedding—not a battlefield."
A pause.
"And listen carefully," he added, voice firm. "If someone tries to turn it into one, you protect the people first. The symbolism can survive. Lives don't."
The acknowledgments came back steady.
Jimmy allowed himself one small breath of relief.
Danny and Elysara returned to the observation ring one last time before the cycle ended. The stars looked sharper tonight, as if reality itself were paying closer attention.
"Do you ever wish," Elysara asked softly, "that you could have chosen a quieter life?"
Danny considered that honestly.
"Yes," he said. "Sometimes."
She nodded. "Me too."
They stood together in silence, hands entwined, neither pretending this choice would shield them from pain.
But both knowing it would give that pain meaning.
Somewhere, a decision crossed its final threshold.
Not yet violence.
But inevitability.
And the universe—scarred, stubborn, and watching—leaned forward once more.