Phase Three attunement required stillness the way a wound requires not being touched — not healing, exactly, just the absence of anything that might make it worse — and I had learned over three nights of it that the deepest stretch of the working left me somewhere I couldn't call sleep and wouldn't call waking either. Aware of the Undercrypt's cold stone against my knees. Aware, distantly, of Noa Genesis's hum settled into something almost like a held note. Not aware of much else, by design, because the domain's third layer wanted attention I couldn't spare for anything happening around my own body.
Which was, I understood later, exactly the window someone had been waiting for.
