Names traveled differently in Vaelshara than they did anywhere else.
Satou had noticed this years ago, early in the settlement's life, before he'd fully understood what the naming system produced in aggregate. In ordinary communities, information moved through conversation — person to person, word to mouth, the usual slow diffusion of news through a population.
In Vaelshara, named beings carried each other's signatures in the ambient field. They didn't need to speak to know when something had changed. They felt it.
By the time the seventh bell rang the morning after the ceremony, every named person in the settlement already knew Kazuma's name.
They had known it since last night.
They knew it the way you knew the temperature had changed — not from being told, from the specific quality of the air being different.
The kitchen produced breakfast at its usual hour.
Satou came through at the early shift and found three of the kitchen staff in the middle of an argument about it.
