[Ava's POV]
The discovery of the Choir’s clinical, observational presence in the woods acted like a chemical agent dropped into the already volatile solution of their tensions, causing immediate and violent crystallization.
The brothers reconvened in the Den’s main living area, the space between them no longer just charged, but fractured along ideological fault lines. The air tasted of ozone and impending rupture.
Lucien stood before the cold, ash-filled hearth, his body a monolith of uncompromising resolve. “We execute a hard relocation. Immediately. Before their surveillance web achieves full integration. The Cascade redoubt remains uncompromised—its wards are geomancy, older than the Council’s bureaucracy.
We perform a clean extraction, vanish into the tectonic silence of the moun
