The calm does not last, and I should have known better than to trust it, because peace in a packhouse like this one never settles without first deciding what it plans to demand in return.
It starts with movement.
Not panic, not shouting, just a subtle acceleration in the rhythms I have learned to read over weeks of watching and listening, boots moving faster on stone, voices tightening around the edges, the air shifting the way it does just before a storm breaks. I feel it before I hear it, the bond tightening just enough beneath my ribs to sharpen my awareness without pulling me anywhere, and I pause in the corridor, one hand braced against the wall as I listen.
Something is wrong.
“Stand by,” someone murmurs as they pass me, eyes flicking my way and then forward again, and that is al
