The Covenant did not chase what it did not understand.
It observed.
In a facility that did not appear on any map, void arrays rotated slowly around a suspended core of condensed negation. Light entered the chamber and did not return. Sound thinned. Presence itself dulled, as if reality had been instructed to remain distant.
This was not a prison.
It was an eye.
Analysts stood along the outer ring, each assigned to a fragment of the world—trade routes, border passes, population centers where doctrine held firm and deviation was statistically unlikely.
Vale Sonarys appeared in none of the feeds.
That absence was highlighted in red.
"Reconfirm parameters," the overseer said.
A technician adjusted the lattice. "Void surveillance is calibrated to detect noncompliance—mana disruption, elemental drift, authority failure."
"Then why do we have gaps?" the overseer asked.
The technician hesitated. "Because the environment is behaving normally."
That answer was unacceptable.
"Define normally," the overseer said.
"Air pressure within seasonal expectation. Wind movement within historical tolerance. Spatial continuity intact." The technician swallowed. "No violations."
Silence followed.
Void surveillance had been designed to detect rebellion by erasing it. It assumed deviation announced itself through excess—too much power, too much movement, too much resistance.
It was blind to restraint.
"Overlay historical records," the overseer ordered.
Ancient data surfaced—fragmented, censored, mislabeled. Instances where wind had moved without storms. Where armies stalled for reasons no commander could articulate. Where rulers hesitated mid-decree and never recovered their certainty.
A term surfaced briefly before being suppressed.
Sovereign Drift.
The overseer closed his fist. "Why was this removed?"
The analyst answered carefully. "Because it implies authority can decay without opposition."
"That's not decay," the overseer said flatly. "That's erosion."
Void surveillance adjusted again, narrowing focus not on power but on consequence. On outcomes that favored motion without justification. On places where rules were obeyed but no longer believed.
A faint signal registered.
Not a location.
A pattern.
"There," the technician said quietly. "Environmental agreement anomaly. Recurring."
"Lock it," the overseer said.
The core pulsed—and failed to stabilize the projection.
The void could erase assertion.
It could not erase consent.
"Deploy passive observation only," the overseer ordered after a moment. "No anchors. No hunters."
"Sir," an analyst asked, "if we don't intervene, what are we watching for?"
The overseer stared into the dark core.
"For the moment," he said, "when the world stops asking us what to do."
Far away, Vale felt nothing change.
That was the point.
He walked beneath a sky that did not tighten around him, across land that did not demand explanation. Somewhere behind him, a system designed to see everything strained to notice what refused to announce itself.
Void surveillance continued to watch.
And for the first time since its creation, it began to learn the limits of erasure.