Death.
I can feel death.
It isn't poetry. It's pressure. A thin change in the air, the kind a blade makes when it's pulled from a sheath. Aetherion is soaked in water mana—disciplined, layered, suffocating—but death has its own texture. It slips between currents. It rides intent. It sits in the bones.
The moment the voice rang out—"I reject this thesis!"—a dozen micro-instincts woke up inside me like trained animals.
Count exits. Note the direction of the shout. Identify the cadence of panic versus performance. Listen for the second voice—the one that follows the first when someone planned it. Feel for the instability ripple that comes with sabotage spells. Watch the Council ward-lines for an involuntary flare.
Nothing flared.
Which meant the danger wasn't the fortress.
It was people.
That is always the truth.
