The hard pace held for the first hour without conversation. Effort went into footing, into breath, into the continuous low-level techniques that kept the observer's growth from accelerating and the mark's residual claim from answering. The screening lattice blurred directional signatures just enough that the recalculating pursuit teams remained a trailing pressure rather than an immediate intercept.
Seraphina reported the numbers at regular intervals.
Observer coherence: thirty percent.
Thirty-one.
The interface with the mark thickened by corresponding fractions. What had begun as a thin pressure against the closed cycle of the god-heart became a steady presence that required active resistance to keep from drawing residual energy across the connection. Each point of growth in the observer made the next point easier for it to claim.
