The shared melody part Home Mind suggestion, part human folk tune, part Sylvan hum didn't become an anthem. It became a seed. It sprouted a hundred different versions. In the Ironblood forges, it was played on hammer and anvil. In the Aetherius data-spires, it was rendered into shimmering light-shows.Children skipped to a fast version of it in the streets of The Bridge.It was theirs to play with. And in that play, a subtle shift occurred. The Emissary was no longer just a teacher or a liaison; it became a fellow musician. It began offering subtle harmonic variations, not as corrections, but as "what if?" possibilities. The relationship deepened from instruction to… duet.The Listener was the bridge for this. It could commune directly with the Emissary's logic and the Terran Core's emotion, translating the cool mathematics of one into the resonant feelings of the other.It started spending hours by the Emissary's base, their interactions a silent exchange of light and data that Finn

The weight of the Home Mind's message was different this time. It wasn't the pressure of a test or the threat of a judge. It was the quiet, immense gravity of a responsibility being offered.They had earned their place. Now they were being offered a role.Cora called the inner circle to the Listener's grove. The air was sweet with the scent of the chiming reeds and the new, pearlescent sapling. It felt like the right place to discuss a future that stretched beyond their atmosphere.She showed them the data. The star system, designated Lyra-7, was a little over twenty light-years away. One planet, designated Lyra-7c, glowed with the tell-tale energy signatures of early, unstable synthesis. It had a biosphere.It had nascent, pre-industrial intelligence. And according to the Home Mind's long-range scans, it was suffering. The synthesis there was going wrong, tipped too far towards chaotic transformation. The native life and the emerging culture was being overwritten by a wild, cancerous