It did not build.
It did not escalate from Stage Three the way Stage Three had built from Stage Two — the slow gathering, the deliberate draw, the controlled absorption she had trained for weeks. Stage Four was nothing like that.
It detonated.
Outward from her sternum, through her arms, into the contact point between his hand and her wrist — a pulse so complete and so consuming that for one moment the entire creek bed went quiet in her awareness. Not silent — she could still hear the engagement around her, the sounds of the battle still running. But in her specific awareness, the only thing that existed was the contact point and what was moving through it.
She felt his gifts.
All of them. The full composite weight of thirty years of extraction — not one ability but dozens, layered and
