Years passed in what felt to Elias like a serene, peaceful blink of an eye. After Zorak's true death and the cosmic shockwaves that followed, Elias had deliberately pulled back from his work. The universe had learned to fear him, and in that fear, he had found the peace he had always wanted.
He had spent eighteen months with Kaelen, dedicating himself fully to their shared life. He had learned the quiet rhythms of her day, from the way she organized the pill stocks by molecular resonance frequency to the way she would hum a gentle tune—an ancient melody from her homeworld—when she thought he wasn't listening. For the first time since his awakening, he wasn't calculating or optimizing every moment. He was simply living.
And then, their greatest project began. Kaelen was pregnant.
