[Ray's POV]
I knew Gale wasn't the type to waste coin on trinkets. His cynical, transactional nature was one of his few reliable traits. But hearing him confirm it—that the dull hexagon in his palm was a sealed elemental mana stone—sent a jolt through me. Those were relics, artifacts of a more magically turbulent age. They were rarer than diamond and worth more than a division's annual payroll. The shock that tightened Ace's jaw and widened Ann's eyes for a fraction of a second mirrored my own.
More importantly, it confirmed a suspicion. None of us—not Ace with his witch-sharpened senses, not Ann with her assassin instincts, not me with my general awareness—had detected even a whisper of power from that stone. It was inert. Dead. Just like the spent black magic restraints we'd been collecting. The similarity was too precise to be coincidence.
