Isolation never begins with walls.
It begins with permission.
⸻
The first thing Zane notices is not absence.
It is quiet consent.
The bond still hums.
The land still breathes.
The wolves still stand.
But the world stops reaching.
Jason sees it in the lattice before Zane feels it fully.
“Something changed overnight,” he says slowly.
“It didn’t cut the center off.”
Zane looks down at the heir, warm and sleeping.
“Then what.”
Jason swallows.
“It made the center… optional.”
⸻
Across Blood Moon, requests that once drifted instinctively toward the sanctum now hesitate.
A healer pauses, then handles a crisis alone.
A patrol reroutes without checking in.
A distant village chooses silence over reaching out.
Not rejection.
Self-containment.
Zane’s jaw tightens.
“They’re tryin
