Chapter 368: No One's Ground
Nobody moved first. The fifth ring held its new brightness the way a held breath holds still, and for a long moment the whole square watched it instead of each other.
"It's not going to answer standing there," Kai said at last. "Not by itself. Neither will we."
He crouched at the ring's edge again, closer this time, close enough that the cold pressed against his skin without touching the frost. Pool at fifty-four percent — he said the number out loud before Soren could ask, the way he'd started doing since the recovery rule went into his father's book. Four anchors down. One left, and no one standing here belonged to it.
"I want to read it alone first," he said. "No witness. Just to see what it gives without one."
