The first fracture did not announce itself.
It did not begin with sound, or light, or anything that could be immediately recognized as change.
It began in the same way everything else had begun since the reconstruction—with quiet, with continuity, with a world that appeared to be behaving exactly as it always had.
That was why it was not noticed immediately.
Not at Silver Fang.
Not by Arvella, or Lucas, or Seraphina.
It was not even noticed at the northern boundary, where Idris Venn had spent weeks training himself to observe what others would dismiss.
It was noticed somewhere smaller.
Somewhere less significant in the structure of the system.
And because of that, it mattered more
Two hundred miles east of Silver Fang, in a region that had not required sustained monitoring since
