On the crystal world of Suun, the trouble was not so simple, and Viktor had spent two days turning it over.

He stood at the edge of the town’s energy wells with Liang beside him, looking out at the far ridgeline where another force had quietly begun to settle in. Not attacking. Not yet. Just arriving, building, edging closer to the wells that Ananta Regalon had claimed first, testing how much they could take before someone stopped them.

"They are not raiders," Viktor said. "Raiders I would understand. These are organized. Patient. They are doing exactly what we would do, which is the part I do not like." He folded his arms. "Someone is running them who thinks the way I think. That makes this a negotiation as much as a fight, and I would rather know which one it is before we commit."

"It is always both, up here," Liang said. He had reached the top of enough climbs to have buried the easy answers a long time ago. "You talk until talking stops working, and then you fight, and then you talk again over whatever is left. The trick is not mistaking one phase for the other."

Behind them, Bianca was running the town’s defenses with her granddaughter at her shoulder. Valentina was young, sharp, and far too pleased to be working beside the grandmother she had heard stories about her whole climb. "If they want a fight, Grandmother, we should give them one before they finish settling in," Valentina said. "Hit them while they are still unpacking."

"Spoken like someone who has never had to clean up after a fight she started," Bianca said, but she was smiling as she said it, proud of the fire even as she banked it. "We hold. We watch. We make ourselves expensive enough to attack that talking starts to look wise. And if it comes to blows anyway, then yes, my fierce girl, we hit them so hard they remember it." She glanced at Viktor. "But that is his call, and Almond’s. Not ours alone."

Viktor nodded slowly. "I am sending it up the network tonight. Let the heart decide whether Suun talks or Suun fights."

---

On the green world of Orin, the talk was harder, because Orin was losing.

Kayla had taken the lush world gladly, six months ago, because growing things sang to her and Orin was nothing but growing things, fertile beyond anything the kingdom had claimed. But fertile worlds drew strong forces, and the one that had come for Orin was stronger than the town could hold alone.

"We cannot take them," Emma said flatly. She was one of the newer arrivals, younger generation, and she did not waste words dressing up bad news. "I have run the numbers six ways and they come out the same every time. They have two heavy hitters we cannot match, and they know it, and they are pushing harder every day because they have worked out that we are bluffing about being able to stop them."

"We are not bluffing," Finn said. "We are stalling. There is a difference."

"The difference does not matter if they call it," Anya said quietly. She and Finn had come up together, and she had a way of cutting to the bone of a thing. "Emma is right. We are good, but good is not enough here. Not against those two."

Kayla looked out over the groves she had spent six months coaxing into glory, and her jaw set. She hated the thought of giving up a single tree of it. But she hated the thought of burying her people for pride even more, and she had learned, from the best schemers in the kingdom, that there was no shame in calling for help.

"Then we ask," she said. "Paloma, you have the steadiest hand on the network relay. Send it up to the heart, clean and honest. Tell them Orin is worth keeping, tell them we cannot keep it alone, and ask for reinforcement." She turned from the groves. "There is no weakness in it. The whole point of a network is that no town stands alone. We hold what we can until they answer. And they will answer. That is what we are."

Paloma, an old monster with a calm that nothing rattled, was already at the relay. "Sending it now," she said. "The heart will hear it within the minute."

---

And the heart heard all of it.

In the pocket dimension, the requests came in across the evening, one after another, the network carrying a dozen worlds’ worth of voices into a single room. Veld, planning its strike. Suun, asking whether to talk or fight. Orin, asking for help and not too proud to ask. And more besides, a kingdom’s worth of small and large concerns flowing into the place where Almond and Lily sat and read all of it.

"Orin first," Lily said. "Reinforcement is time-sensitive. The others can hold a day. Orin might not."

"Agreed." Almond studied the projection, the green world glowing on it beside a rival force marked in red. "Two heavy hitters, Kayla says. So we answer with someone who eats heavy hitters for sport." He almost smiled. "Send Ainen and his family. Flame answers force, and Saffa and Fraisea can shore up Orin’s defenses while the fighting settles. Tell Kexell to go with them. He has been restless, and a restless dragon is a problem looking for a wall to knock down. Give him a wall."

"He will love that," Lily said. "Gopu will want to go too."

"Gopu goes where his parents go. He will be safe behind Saffa’s lines, and he will learn something." Almond marked the order, and across the network, on a world six months and a galaxy away, his words reached Ainen’s family within the minute. "Suun, we wait one more day. Let Viktor read them. If they are the kind that can be talked to, talking is cheaper than blood. Veld takes its ridge tomorrow as planned, and we do not interfere, because Rudra does not need us looking over his shoulder."

He sat back, and for a moment he simply looked at the projection, at the dozen worlds glowing in the dark, at the family spread across all of them and connected through all of them, at the kingdom that had grown so far past the scattered, beaten group John Wicked had once carried into the layers.

"Six months," Lily said quietly, reading the look. "We have come a long way in six months."

"We have," Almond said. "And we are still only spreading out across the middle plane. The frontline is layers above us yet." His eyes moved north, the old habit, toward the distant edge where John Wicked still pushed alone. "Every world we take, every fight we win, every Regalon who climbs up and finds us, it all points the same way. Up. Toward the front. Toward him." He let out a slow breath. "We are not there yet. But the layer is starting to feel us coming."

Below them, across a dozen worlds, the kingdom worked through the night, every town tied to every other, every voice heard, every fight shared. Ananta Regalon had stopped being a place. It had become a thing in motion, a rising thing, and it was not going to stop until it reached the top.