Lydia dropped the privacy seal on the door. Feng Lan stepped through and the seal locked again behind her at maximum density. She carried the same formal dark robe she had worn when she left for the administrative wing, yet the fabric along her right shoulder and the side of her neck was darkened with the residual scorch of overused Rebirth Eyes. Her crimson hair had come partially unbound. The exhaustion that had been visible before was now written into the way she held her balance.
Seraphina spoke before anyone else.
"You are not alone. There is a residual signature moving in parallel with your position. Incomplete. Structured. It is not an anchor and it is not a full fragment."
Feng Lan's amber eyes, still carrying the unstable gold of recent heavy use, met Seraphina's silver ones without surprise.
"I know. It attached during the final phase of the suppression. It is not hostile in the way the Greta fragment was hostile. It is listening. And it is learning."
