Ashley lay perfectly still in her medical bed, letting the scholars believe she was unconscious. The pretense came easily—her body felt like it was held together with string and good intentions. But her mind remained sharp.
The golden fractures beneath her skin had faded to thin lines, barely visible unless light caught them at the right angle. But she could feel them—a network of broken pathways where her Guardian Covenant had once flowed. The scholars called it "cascade failure," as if she were a machine that had simply malfunctioned.
She preferred to think of it as evolution.
"The subject shows remarkable adaptation," Scholar Hadwin was saying to his colleague near the window. "Most Covenant failures result in permanent ability loss. But these fractures seem to be... reorganizing."
"Reorganizing how?" Scholar Osanna moved closer to Ashley's bed, but didn't touch. They'd learned that physical contact triggered painful feedback.
