A week passed.
Nothing strange happened.
And that, somehow, made everything worse.
The world kept going.
That was what unnerved Lucien most.
He trained. He crafted. He refined contingencies
And still—
nothing came.
That silence grew teeth.
He spent much of that week speaking with Seran through the jade communication disc.
The calls were not long, but they were regular.
Seran updated him on the shifting state of the continents. More regions were becoming stable. More rumors had hardened into accepted truth.
Lucien, in turn, told Seran what he was doing in Lootwell.
The fortifications. The arrays. The equipment. The simulations. The possible countermeasures.
At one point, the conversation drifted.
Lucien asked...
"Do you ever think about the Liberator Convergence took?"
There was a pause on the other side.
Long enough that Lucien knew Seran had stopped smiling.
"Of course I do," Seran said at last.
His voice was calm.
