Rowan did not move immediately.
Movement, he had learned, often gave the illusion of progress. It changed position without altering outcome. It satisfied urgency without resolving it.
He remained where he was.
Not at the boundary.
Not outside it.
Positioned precisely where both could be observed without either requiring response.
The convergence pressed faintly at the edges of his awareness, structured and steady, its four-strand braid maintaining the same careful alignment it had held since its reconstruction. It did not reach for him.
It did not reject him.
It did not register him at all.
That, more than anything else, had determined his survival.
Not concealment.
Irrelevance.
He did not belong to what it defined as part of its system.
So it did not consider him. It let him
