The signal instrument was a glass-and-copper assembly mounted on the research chamber's north wall, calibrated to translate dimensional energy fluctuation into a reading on a copper dial graduated in precise increments. Darak had been recording its readings three times daily for six weeks. The needle had held at fourteen percent so consistently that he had begun noting the exact position of the needle's tip at each measurement, because the consistency itself had become the data. An instrument that did not vary was either working correctly or broken, and confirming which one was which required documentation that made the pattern explicit.
At the third hour of the night, on a cold-hardened evening when the orcish security contingent outside was running its rotation change and the research chamber's braziers had burned low, the needle moved.
Not gradually. Not in the slow creep that had built the deviation over six weeks. It jumped.
