CHAPTER 27.7 — The Line That Shouldn’t Hold
Riven doesn’t remember standing up. One blink he’s still at the desk, palms pressed to the surface, heartbeat caught in that steady, artificial metronome the anomalies have been keeping for the last hour. The next blink—he’s already halfway to the hallway door, breath shallow, like something had pulled him forward by the sternum. Not dragged. Not guided. Aligned. The floorboards under his feet hum with an almost imperceptible vibration—too soft to be sound, too rhythmic to be random. It syncs with the pulsing in his wrists, a circulation pattern he doesn’t remember ever having. He stops. The vibration stops with him. “Riven?” Lyra’s voice floats in from the living room. Worried. Lightweight. Practiced calm. “You okay?” He tries to answer, but something shifts again. A half-second
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