The Minimum
With only twelve of the eighteen Good Luck Cats able to stand and a storm closing the wake window, Siru, Marcus and Vivek gamble on the bare ritual minimum to open one Bridge before Salugi's hunters reach the island.
The eighteen Good Luck Cats are together for the first time on the Guardian Island wake site, but six are too wounded from the reef ambush to stand for the ritual. As the storm-driven alignment window narrows and enemy boats are sighted off the reef, the group fights over whether to attempt the wake at the ritual's bare minimum — risking a broken chain that could burn a Bridge's crystal core forever — or wait and lose the window for a generation. Vivek forces the count: exactly twelve can stand, no margin. The tribes' old chant rises from all eighteen voices, standing and propped alike, as the platform cracks under them and the storm breaks. The wake only half-succeeds — six plinths burn dead, but Puma Punku tears open, blinding and vast, and against every fear, it holds — just as something on the far side turns to look back at them.