The first fracture did not announce itself with noise.
It appeared as hesitation.
Ethan felt it in the way people spoke more carefully around him, choosing words that sounded neutral but carried expectation underneath. He felt it in the pauses before questions, in the way curiosity had started to lean forward instead of simply looking. The world was no longer just watching the lighthouse. It was testing the ground around it, pressing lightly at first, checking where it might give way.
The compass responded differently now. It no longer pulsed with urgency or heat. Instead, it carried a subtle resistance, like a muscle tightening before strain. Ethan had the unsettling sense that the system was no longer reacting to events—it was anticipating them.
At school, attendance had dropped agai
