By the third day in Harth the city had begun to treat the spiral scar the way Veythra once treated sealed glass—cautiously, with growing practical interest. Junior scholars requested permission to observe the lens. A few senior ones asked, stiffly, whether the double refusal could be taught in principle if not in bloodline. Irien scheduled formal discussions and then postponed them twice, as if still deciding whether Lira was a solution or a new category of problem.
The party used the breathing room. Vesh and Tallen took Sela and Cal through the College’s restricted cartography wing, where maps of older wounds—some theoretical, some disturbingly specific—were kept under lock and scholarly disdain. One map showed a chain of pressure points scattered across the continent, most marked dorman
