Lena's POVThey came at dawn.Not the slow patient pressure of three nights ago. This was different. Faster. More deliberate. The specific quality of something that had spent three days recalculating and had arrived at a conclusion it was committed to.I was already awake when the ward fired.Not because I had been waiting anxiously. Because the thread had been running at a particular frequency since midnight, the low hum of something preparing, and I had learned in the past week to read it the way you read weather, not predicting exactly but knowing the general shape of what was coming.I was dressed and at the window when Darion's door opened across the corridor.He appeared in my doorway four seconds later. Fully dressed. Eyes completely clear in the way his eyes were clear when he had not been sleeping either."You felt it," I said."Hours ago," he said."You did not wake me," I said."You were not asleep," he said. "And you needed the rest you were getting even if it was not slee
Last Updated : 2026-04-27
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