The peace that followed the closing of the Great Ledger was not a stagnant thing, but a period of profound, subterranean shifting. While Anthony Jodah had finally allowed his silver-laced hands to find rest in the soil of the Highland glens, the world he had helped "Integrate" was beginning to dream. It happened first in the deep, untrodden valleys where the Paleo-Bloom had first taken hold. The Ghost-Firs, no longer tethered to the rigid mandates of the star-tally, were beginning to communicate in a language that transcended the silver lace. It was a cognitive resonance—a "Green Mind" emerging from the collective neural network of the global forest. For the humans living within the violet mist, the first sign was not a sound, but a shared sensation of being watched by a presence that felt older than the Echelon and newer than the morning.Anthony noticed it while tending to a row of light-ferns near the vault’s entrance. The plants didn't just react to his touch; they anticipated it.

The revelation from Proxima Centauri acted like a catalyst, turning the slow-burning peace of Earth into a frantic, creative upheaval. If the "Green Mind" could consume the machinery of the Owners and turn golden needles into trellis-work, then the survivors of the Diaspora no longer needed to hide within the atmosphere’s protective shell. The "Galaxy-Common" required a new kind of architecture—not the sterile, pressurized cans of the old Echelon space programs, but a living infrastructure. Across the lunar plains and the Martian canyons, the first "Hive-Cities" began to emerge, grown from the fusion of the Iron Bloom and the collective intent of the Weavers.Anthony stood on the rim of the Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole, watching the birth of the first Hive-City, "Vane’s Rest." It wasn't being built with cranes or welding torches. Instead, a massive cluster of Ghost-Fir seeds, enriched with the Bio-Steel nutrients of the Highland Vault, had been planted into the lunar ice.