Chapter 65 — The Weight of Gentle Things
The first fracture after integration did not split the sky.
It split a friendship.
Kael felt it before anyone raised their voices.
Not as sound.
As pressure.
A subtle tightening along the luminous thread that now lived within him not burning, not urgent. Just a tilt. Like a scale shifting a single grain too far to one side. A tension so small most would never notice it. But to him, it was unmistakable: the emotional architecture of the city leaning out of true.
He paused mid step in the corridor outside the council library. Light from the tall windows fell in clean bars across the floor, catching suspended dust. The air smelled faintly of paper and cedar resin. Everything looked ordinary.
Nothing felt ordinary.
Elowen, walking beside him, noticed the stillness immediately. She had learned the difference between his thoughtful pauses and these other ones the ones where his body went quiet but his awareness went vast.
