Purple lightning flickered along the eastern horizon like jagged cracks in an obsidian bowl.
Ten massive Star-Iron warships carved a foaming white wake through the dark swells, their black hulls humming in unison.
The voyage from Frost-Gale Cay covered sixty miles of open ocean.
During the forty real hours at sea, the flagship’s spirit-core cabin doubled Kaelen’s rest under Stage 5 Hibernation Compression.
Forty real hours became eighty Fallow Hours.
Track 1 climbed from 960 hours to 1,040 hours, expanding to ten thousand four hundred and ten times baseline power.
Track 3 rose from 240 hours to 320 hours, sitting at 321 times baseline strength.
Track 4, recently reset after the pointer that slew Kaelor, climbed smoothly from zero to 80 hours.
