Since FTL Communication between the two planets had been cut off, the Loren Alliance seemed to have returned once more to its former days of solitude—the vast sea of stars was silent and cold, no greetings came from afar through the dark night, and the beings of the mortal world crouched beneath gravity, facing this boundless universe from a lonely orbiting planet as they quietly counted down the time before the Magic Tide arrived.
Antavien's FTL Communication Array no longer transmitted signals, and the antenna array of the Thorin Giant Tree no longer received voices. The Star Resolvers had temporarily returned to their respective fields of research, while the Servo Brain Array once used to assist in translating alien languages had temporarily allocated its computing power elsewhere in the Neural Network—everything seemed to be returning to its starting point, yet everything had quietly changed.
Though the people of Loren still crouched beneath gravity, they had already raised their heads and prepared to face the stars—because among those stars, another group of Sentient Beings was waiting to hear their voices again.
As summer gave way to winter on the ground, a grand project finally began to near its end.
Deep in space, far from the surface, Nicholas led an engineering inspection team through a magnificent, heavy gate within the ancient megastructure known as Firmament Station, built around the planet. Light streamed down from the dome, gleaming with metallic brilliance across his smooth, polished shell, while a low, gentle hum occasionally drifted from nearby compartments or beneath the floor. In a sense, those low and gentle sounds were among the greatest achievements achieved by the engineering teams under his command—the ancient space station was gradually awakening in mortal hands. It might still have been far from its former prime, but at least