Ironhaven announced itself two hours before they reached it.
Not through walls or towers — through absence. The eastern road's ambient System activity, which Kael had been feeling through the Domain's stabilization function since the partial evolution, simply stopped at a certain point. No Class readings from travelers on the road. No experience accumulation from the natural deaths the Domain was claiming. The Soul Harvest running and finding nothing to harvest because the System architecture in this section of road had cracked enough that it couldn't process the transactions.
A dead zone.
The first one.
Sera felt it through him — she'd developed a sensitivity to his Domain reactions that she'd never commented on and he'd never mentioned, the way you don't mention things that have simply become part of how you operate together. She looked at the road ahead. "How wide?"
