I didn't move from the desk after Zereth and Rena left. The scroll sat where I'd set it, the wax seal broken, the red thread of it curling like a dried vein across the parchment. Ten days. My own birth date, written in a stranger's hand as if it meant nothing more than a date on a calendar.
It meant everything.
Noa Genesis stirred against my wrist before I'd said a word, the gauntlet's plating shifting the way it did when it had already reached a conclusion and was only waiting for permission to voice it.
"You've noticed the anomaly," it said. Not a question. Noa Genesis rarely asked questions it already knew the answer to.
