The news of the halted attack spread through the Citadel before the biological messengers even activated.
It was impossible to ignore: the air carried a new vibration, a tension that seemed to watch every movement.
The Practitioner of Inertia, still recovering, had been placed inside a stabilization chamber.
The living membranes around him pulsed in an erratic rhythm, struggling to decode the damage caused by his own collapsing energy.
No master could touch the patient without the Field of Intention reacting in rejection.
It was as if his very Path had been deemed incompatible with the new Era.
Above the luminous vents, fragments of the Relational Order hovered like living crystals.
They did not speak; they did not move — they simply observed.
And the entire Triad felt their presence.
The council gathered in one of the Central Clades.
The chamber felt smaller than usual, compressed by the invisible presence of the new laws.
Each of them understood the weight of the recent hours: nothing would function the same anymore.
Symbiotic hierarchies would have to be revised; Path training restructured; ritual disputes reorganized.
Then a dry sound rippled through the complex — like a snap inside a massive membrane.
The light in the living walls dimmed for a heartbeat.
A second fragment of the Relational Order had attempted to descend… and failed.
Instantly, hundreds of sensitive beings within the Triad felt intense pressure inside their cores, as if pulled in two opposite directions.
There was no pain, only forewarning.
The Eternavir reacted at once.
A pulse crossed the sky, and all Cosmic Citadels fixed their awareness on the center of the Triad.
Even the colossal entity that rarely interfered — the Cognitive Nexus — felt unnaturally alert.
Something was blocking the full implementation of the new Era.
Something powerful enough to interrupt a fundamental law.
And in the suffocating silence that followed, a single realization spread across masters, disciples, and symbiotic entities:
The Second Great Cycle wasn't just beginning —
it was being contested.