Silence, Aurelia learned, was not passive.
It demanded upkeep.
Two days after the Gate’s thresholds began misaligning, the world responded not with catastrophe, but with impatience. Not from people from systems that had relied on escalation to define relevance.
The first sign came as paperwork.
Aurelia stood in the Stronghold’s archive chamber, surrounded by stacks of requests that were not requests at all. Appeals framed as cooperation. Cooperation framed as urgency. Urgency framed as inevitability.
Every message carried the same subtext:
Come back to the center.
She did not.
Kane watched her skim another document, then set it aside without comment. “You’re bleeding leverage,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” Aurelia replied. “Intentionally.”
“You know they’ll interpret that as weakness.
