By the afternoon, the shift was impossible to ignore.
What had started as quiet tension in the morning had turned into something more visible. Conversations stopped pretending to be casual, groups formed with clearer intent, and the usual rhythm of the territory felt disrupted, like everything was waiting for something to happen but no one wanted to be the first to say it out loud.
Lyra noticed it in the way people looked at her now.
Not just curious.
Aware.
“You feel it too,” Kael said as they stood near the edge of the grounds, watching the movement from a distance.
“Yes,” Lyra replied. “It’s spreading faster than I expected.”
“It always does when information leaks without direction,” he said.
Lyra glanced at him. “You think it’s leaking already?”
Kael’s expression remained calm
