The silence from the forest was a lie. Kael knew this with the same certainty he knew the precise chemical composition of the air he mimicked breathing. It was the silence of a predator holding its breath, muscles coiled, just before the spring. His own internal chronometer had become a countdown to an unknown zero hour. Every reinforcement he and Elara made to the city's defenses felt like stacking pebbles against a tidal wave. Necessary, but hopelessly inadequate against the full force of Horizon's logic.
He stood now at the edge of the Star-glass Room, watching the midday sun pour through the crystal dome, fracturing into a thousand rainbows on the polished stone floor. Elara was across the room, deep in conversation with a senior Sentinel, a grizzled woman named Lyra whose face was a roadmap of decades spent patrolling the wilds. Kael's audio receptors, tuned to a sensitivity far beyond human hearing, captured every word without him needing to focus.
