Dani Sloan left a note under his door while Soren was in combat training.
Four words: My office. After dinner.
No signature, but her handwriting was neat and forward-slanting, sa as the Chapter notes she left in every file the academy had on record.
He showed up at six-thirty.
Her office was a single room on the second floor of the admin block, smaller than it should have been for a Council mber’s daughter, which told him she had taken it specifically because nobody expected her to be there.
The moth was sitting on her desk when he walked in, wings folded, pale gold and perfectly still.
Still recording.
Dani was at the window with a folder open in both hands and she didn’t look up when the door closed.
"Cole Harver ca to your room at five-seventeen this morning," she said.
"Yes."
"He filed an unclassified event report and gave you a twenty-eight day window."
"Yes."
"My window is thirty days." She turned a page. "Which ans his deadline is two days before mine."
Soren sat in the chair across from her desk without being invited.
Dani looked up.
"Whoever sent him," she said, "gave him a shorter leash than the one I’m holding. That’s not a coincidence."
"No."
"Soone is using both of us to manage you." She set the folder down. "That makes a tool, Soren Kane, and I don’t like being a tool."
"I know."
"Do you know who it is?"
"Not yet."
"But you have a theory?"
He had three theories and none of them had enough support yet.
"Not one I’d put in a report," he said.
Dani’s moth lifted one wing and folded it back down.
He watched her hands on the folder and the way she wasn’t closing it, because the top page had nas on it and she wanted him to see that she had nas.
"Cole Harver has two active cases," she said.
"Both unclassified events. Both in the last four months. At academies in the Continental network."
She turned the folder so the page faced him. "Both involving tars with illegal early bonds and anomalous evolution events."
Soren read the nas.
He didn’t recognize them.
But the locations were both places the novel had flagged as sites for sothing the Bureau called a Fracture Event, three of which were going to happen in the next eighteen months and one of which was going to happen at this academy specifically.
He kept his face still.
"You know those nas," Dani said.
"I know the locations."
"Sa thing."
"One of those academies had a Fracture Event six weeks ago," he said. "The tar survived. The bonded beast didn’t."
Dani’s pen stopped moving.
"That’s not in any report I’ve seen."
"No. It wouldn’t be." He looked at the page. "The Bureau is watching tars who produce anomalous bond readings because they think anomalous bonds are an early indicator for Fracture susceptibility." He let her sit with that. "They’re not wrong, but they’re looking at the wrong variable."
"What’s the right variable?"
"I’m still working that out."
"Soren Kane."
"Give a week."
She looked at him for a long ti and the moth’s wings stirred once.
"Tell about the fracture," she said.
"A Fracture is what happens when a dinsional boundary collapses. The academy’s dungeon system runs on controlled boundary stress, so academies with active dungeon networks are at higher risk."
Soren kept his voice the sa way. "The Bureau knows this. They’ve known about it for two years. They’re not publishing it because if they do, three hundred academy networks shut down and the ranking system collapses."
Dani put her pen down.
"How do you know that?"
"Because my bond gives environntal feedback and the spatial pressure in this building matches exactly with the week before Western Continental fell".
Dani put her pen down. "That’s not a prediction. That’s a structural failure reading".
"The Bureau knows the stress limits and they’re ignoring them," Soren said.
"The spatial rifts are accelerating and if the collapse happens early, the people who are supposed to survive will be in the wrong positions".
"Including you, including ," Soren said. "That’s why I need the twenty-eight days to rank up and get to the right position before the boundary tears itself apart".
Dani looked at the folder and then looked at him.
"I’m going to need more than theories," she said.
"I know."
"I need one verifiable proof. One thing I can confirm on my own."
He’d expected that.
"The student in the dical wing," he said. "His na is Fen Harrak. Check his file. He was placed in Class A as a monitoring asset seven months ago, two months before the academy opened. He reports to the sa chain that assigned Cole Harver."
Dani went very still.
"The chain that assigned Cole," she said slowly, "runs through the Thermal Division, and the Thermal Division reports to the Continental Council’s oversight committee."
"Yes."
"My father sits on that committee."
Soren didn’t say anything.
The moth opened both wings all the way, held them there and the gold color in the lamplight was very bright.
Dani picked up her pen and clicked it once and put it back down.
"Check Fen Harrak’s file," Soren said. "See when the placent was authorized. If the date is before the academy’s official opening, you’ll have your proof."
He stood up.
"Dani."
She looked up.
"The monitoring, the tiline, Cole’s twenty-eight days, whoever is running this from your father’s committee. None of it helps them if the Fracture arrives early and nobody is strong enough to hold the boundary."
Soren picked up the folder from her desk, turned it back to face her, and set it down. "I’m trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s all I’m trying to do."
He walked out.
In the hallway Grimm fell into step beside him, silent and close enough that her shoulder pressed against his leg.
[DING! — New information integrated. Tiline deviation: 41%. Fracture Event: estimated arrival recalculated.]
[DING! — Previous estimate: Chapter 93 equivalent. Revised estimate: Chapter 31 equivalent.]
[DING! — Quest tir: 28 days. Fracture Event: estimated 18 days.]
Soren stopped walking.
He had eighteen days before the Fracture, and twenty-eight before his obsession cap collapsed, his soul was at seventy-six percent, Grimm couldn’t speak, and Selah was still figuring out what she was.
Grimm pushed her head hard into his palm.
He closed his hand around her ear and stood in the hallway and did the math and none of it ca out right.
"I’ll need a new plan."
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