The path to the center wasn't a line, but a sequence of breaths. Rhea led them past red markers that clung to concrete like dried blood, over metal grates whose ribs creaked, through silent shafts where their own echo tried to catch up with them. The pattern Biblion had given them flickered as a thin circle on Rhea's bracelet—sometimes brighter, sometimes fainter—and jumped to a new point with each turn they took.
"Resonance path," Rhea murmured, as if to prevent the term from evaporating. "If we lose it, we're done."
"We won't lose it," said Alaric. His jaw was set tight, his movements compact, efficient. No wasted gesture. And yet there was something about him that sounded different—as if an invisible thread had pulled his attention outward.
Lina noticed it without looking. It was the way his breath sometimes faltered, how his gaze went over his shoulder, too often, too quick. "He's calling you," she had said. Now she felt the proof like a metallic taste on her tongue.
