Location: Zhū'kethara — Hall of Remembrance, city streets, gathering districts
Date/Time: 25–27 Emberrise, 9939 AZI
Realm: Demon Realm
The web was different.
Ren noticed it before he opened his eyes — the way a man who'd carried a stone on his chest for millennia would notice if that stone shifted. Not lighter. The weight of eight million threads didn't lighten. But the texture had changed. The grinding, fraying pull that had defined the Common Path for as long as he could remember — the sense of a net slowly thinning, holes widening where threads had snapped and never been replaced — was still there. Still enormous. Still his.
But threaded through it now, like the first green filaments pushing through cracked earth: warmth.
