I had begun to understand something I had never been meant to comprehend, something that no whispered conversation behind closed doors or bloodied record buried beneath stone could have prepared me for. The threads of the Chaos Thread System moved around me differently now, tighter, heavier, and strangely aware, no longer yielding obediently to my will. They had always followed my movements with fluid precision, flowing like rivers shaped by my every thought, but tonight they seemed to resist in subtle ways, as if something beyond their design had noticed me. The realization pressed against my mind and chest simultaneously, and I could feel it in the rhythm of my heartbeat. Something had shifted, and the weight of it settled into the courtyard with an almost tangible presence.
The courtya
