“Am I sorry?”
“No.”
“Good talk.”
I examine the ward crack. “It was not alone in weakening the perimeter.”
His expression hardens. “More?”
“Likely.”
The residue trail continues toward the district boundary, thinning but still present. We follow it past shuttered houses, a boarded shrine, and a row of cobblestones slick with morning damp. At the boundary, the air tightens around me.
I stop.
Carved into the cobblestone is a sigil so shallow that mortal eyes would miss it unless searching. It is not meant to activate yet. It is a marker, one piece of a larger structure.
Corin crouches beside it. “This bad?”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
“Abduction preparation.”
His face goes still. “For Sable.”
“Yes.”
He stands too quickly, anger flaring through his altered aura. “Explain.”
“The sigil weakens manifestation stability inside its radius and creates a momentary gap in defensive response. If placed in sufficient number, such markers could define a path through which an anchor may be extracted before the tether compensates.”
He looks down the street as if seeing every cobblestone as an enemy. “How many?”
“I do not know.”
“That’s an ugly sentence.”
“Yes.”
Corin steps into the radius before I can stop him.
The effect strikes instantly.
My manifestation flickers, the edges of my form blurring as pressure clamps around my core. Distance from Sable worsens the impact, and the sigil converts that distance into instability with vicious efficiency. Corin sees the reaction and steps back at once.
“Damn it,” he says. “It works.”
“You used yourself as a trigger.”
“I confirmed the trap.”
“You are developing Sable’s most aggravating habits.”
“She raised me well.”
I destroy the sigil with a downward sweep of flame and authority, burning the mark out of the stone until the cobble cracks through its center. The relief is immediate but incomplete. The discovery expands outward through my calculations, one hidden mark becoming many, one boundary point becoming a mapped path waiting for completion.
