The Covenant did not react emotionally.
Emotion implied surprise.
What followed the sky's misalignment was procedure.
Deep within the Covenant's inner strata, suppression protocols long considered theoretical were retrieved from sealed archives. Not because catastrophe had occurred, but because stability had begun to argue back.
A disagreement with reality was unacceptable.
In the Central Coordination Hall, concentric arrays of light rotated slowly, each representing a region of Malan. Most glowed steady. A few flickered—not dimmer, not brighter, simply… inconsistent.
An overseer stood with hands clasped behind his back. "Confirm scope."
"Global," an analyst replied. "Minor deviations across multiple domains. No epicenter."
"No epicenter," the overseer repeated. "Which means this isn't expansion. It's resonance."
That word carried weight.
Resonance implied that something did not spread outward—it aligned inward.
"Begin Phase-One Suppression," the overseer ordered. "Quietly."
Commands rippled outward.
Void anchors were recalibrated, not to increase output, but to narrow tolerance. Anti-magic patrols received revised engagement rules: avoid confrontation, prioritize observation, escalate only if influence becomes directional.
New units were activated.
Not hunters.
Listeners.
Individuals trained not to detect power, but choice. They watched for places where the world seemed to hesitate before obeying.
In border regions, supply routes were subtly redirected. In cities, administrative friction increased by fractional margins—permits delayed, access narrowed, movement inconvenienced.
Suppression through inconvenience.
If something was influencing the world, the Covenant would see how it responded to resistance that did not look like resistance at all.
Far from these preparations, Vale felt the shift immediately.
Not as danger.
As weight.
The road ahead felt longer than it had an hour ago. Not harder—just more deliberate. The wind no longer offered quiet assistance. It waited for him to decide first.
He stopped walking.
The world waited with him.
Then he stepped forward.
The pressure eased.
Vale frowned slightly.
"They're adjusting," he murmured. Not the wind. The rules.
Somewhere, a listener marked a notation.
Subject demonstrates priority-based movement alignment.
No coercion detected.
Response appears conditional.
That last word was underlined.
Conditional meant controllable—or so the Covenant believed.
Elsewhere, dragons debated whether this warranted awakening councils long disbanded. Elven circles reopened star-maps no one had consulted in generations. Demons, bound and unbound alike, recalculated contracts whose assumptions were suddenly… outdated.
Asmodeus Noctyrr chuckled softly in his containment.
"They're preparing cages," he said to no one in particular. "For something that doesn't push."
Vale reached the edge of a small town by nightfall. Lights were dimmer than usual. Guards watched the road more carefully.
Not hostile.
Measuring.
He passed through without incident.
Behind him, suppression continued its careful advance—not loud enough to provoke, not forceful enough to reveal fear.
The Covenant believed this was still manageable.
They believed preparation was control.
They had not yet realized the flaw in their strategy.
You could suppress force.
You could contain power.
But you could not suppress a world that had begun to agree with someone.