We stepped through the yard lock without helmets. Mana holds better than plastic up here if you know how to breathe.
Tycho Base spread behind us in low silver—domes, rails, the Aetherite yard we'd tamed two days ago. Ahead, the far-side ridge climbed like a black knife toward a sky full of cold stars. The regolith crunched once under my boot, then learned my weight and went quiet.
"Feel that?" Seraphina asked, already setting her pencil to a clean page.
I did. Not sound—never sound on the Moon—but a rhythm under the ground. A second heartbeat, deep and slow, a pulse that wasn't ours and didn't belong to anything born under this sky.
Luna's shoulder brushed mine. "Something wrote here," she said. "Not long ago."
Reika's voice clicked in from Valdris ops. "Courtesy alerts sent and acknowledged," she said. "South, North—Windwards and Creightons both—West, East, Central, and the Seven. All standing by. No one steps in unless we scream."
"Good," I said.
