Orion took the paper. Looked at it. Three specific compounds, their properties, the mechanism of interaction, the safe windows for use.

"You researched this this morning," he said.

"Last night," Doran said. "After I got back from your manor."

Orion looked at the paper again.

"Doran."

"Yeah."

"Come back tomorrow. Same time." He looked up. "And bring anything else you’ve got on cultivation support."

Something happened in Doran’s expression that it very clearly didn’t know what to do with. It tried several things and settled on neutral. But the neutral was doing a lot of work covering over something that wasn’t neutral at all.

He left without saying anything else.

Luna dropped from the wall the moment he was out of earshot and padded over to Orion. "He’s going to be loyal," she said.

"Good."

"In a different way than me," she added, with the specific precision of someone clarifying the terms of something.

"Different situations require different kinds of loyalty," Orion said.

Luna appeared to accept this but the tail was still doing the complicated thing.

He spent the rest of the morning on Shadow Step and cultivation work in alternating blocks. The pattern was becoming routine enough that his body was starting to anticipate it, a specific kind of mental gearing up before each session that made the early minutes less of a waste.

Cultivation to fourteen percent by midday.

Shadow Step to eighty six by mid-afternoon.

◈ SHADOW STEP COMPATIBILITY ◈

83% >> 86%

Note: Approach to 90% threshold.

Upgrade will unlock automatically at 90%.

Current skill behavior may shift as compatibility increases.

◈ ◈ ◈

*Behavior may shift.*

That was interesting phrasing. He’d have to see what changed when it crossed the threshold. Shadow Step at seventy nine percent had felt like putting on someone else’s skill and making it work through sheer stubbornness. At eighty six it felt considerably more native. Less translation happening in the middle.

He was working through the second afternoon session when the communication disc in his pocket went warm.

Not hot. Just warm. A gentle sustained heat that was clearly intentional rather than body temperature. He pulled it out.

The symbol on the face was faintly lit. Voss.

He pressed his mana into it the way Voss had told him to and the warmth pulsed once in acknowledgment. That was apparently the full extent of the technology, a signal sent and a signal received. No actual message.

Which meant Voss had something and wanted to talk in person.

He looked at Luna. She was sitting nearby and had registered the disc going warm from her proximity.

"The Voss person," she said.

"He’s got information."

"Are we going to him or is he coming here."

Orion thought about it. Going to the main estate meant being visible, possibly running into Seth or the elders in a context he didn’t control. Receiving Voss here meant bringing him into his space, which had its own implications.

"I’ll meet him on the grounds," he said. "Neutral."

He sent a return pulse into the disc and waited.

Twenty minutes later he was standing at the edge of the outer estate path, the narrow one that ran along the perimeter wall, when Voss came around the corner at an unhurried pace with his hands in his pockets looking exactly like someone who was not having a planned meeting.

"Walk with me," Voss said.

They walked.

"The external communication Crane made," Voss said, without preamble, keeping his voice at a level that wouldn’t carry past them. "I found out more."

"And."

"The recipient is a contracted party. Not individual, a small group. They operate in the boundary territories north of the city." Voss paused. "They’re classified as independent contractors but their primary work is disruption of high profile events."

Orion kept his pace even. "Disruption."

"Accidents," Voss said, and the word carried the same weight it had when the elders had used it, a careful word doing dirty work. "Targeted, deniable, staged within the context of a public event so attribution is impossible."

"How many incidents."

"That I could trace, four. Over the last six years. Two were summoner deaths during trial events. One was a collapsed building during a festival gathering. One was a poisoning at an official dinner that was ruled as an allergic reaction." He paused. "They’re good at it."

"What’s the group called."

"They don’t use names. They use a symbol." Voss glanced at him sideways. "A circle with a single line through the center."

Orion thought about the formation diagram in his room. Concentric rings with a center point.

Different symbol. But the category of thought was the same. Someone operating with a specific design, a specific logic.

"Why are you telling me this," he said. Same question as before.

"Because I found out something else," Voss said. He stopped walking. Orion stopped.

Voss looked at him directly. "The contract Crane placed isn’t just for the selection trial."

"Meaning."

"Meaning the trial incident is the cover. The actual target date is earlier." He held Orion’s gaze. "Whoever this group is, they’ve been given a window. Not one specific moment. A window. Three days, starting," he paused, "tomorrow."

Tomorrow.

Orion was quiet for a moment.

Tomorrow through the day after that and the day after that. Three days where someone had been contracted to produce an accident. Not necessarily during any specific event. Just within the window. And the trial as the stated official reason so that if something happened in the lead-up it could be woven into a broader narrative of selection pressures and competition accidents.

Elegant, he thought. In the way that ugly things were sometimes elegant.

"You’re certain of the timeline," he said.

"I’m certain enough to come tell you in person instead of waiting," Voss said.

Orion looked at the path ahead. At the outer wall. At the sky going late-afternoon and the long shadows of the estate trees.

Luna was a presence at the edge of his perception, she’d followed at a distance and he’d felt her the whole time through the passive background awareness of the contract. Still back far enough to give the conversation space. Present enough that she could be there in a second if the second required it.

"What do you want from this," Orion said. Still the core question.

Voss looked at him steadily. "My family needs useful connections. Not powerful connections. Useful ones." He paused. "The difference is that powerful people do what’s convenient for themselves. Useful people do what the situation requires, even when it’s inconvenient."

"And you think I’m useful."

"I think you’re something this empire hasn’t produced in a while and I’d like to not watch it get removed before it becomes what it’s going to become." He said it plainly. No performance. "That’s it. That’s the whole of it."

Orion looked at him.

The passive skill was quiet. No threat response. No flagging of concealment or manipulation. Just a person saying something they meant.

"Alright," Orion said.

"Alright?"

"I’m not going to make promises I don’t intend to keep and I’m not going to pretend this is more than it is right now. But I’m listening and the information is useful and I’m not ignoring the source." He looked at Voss. "That’s where we are."

Voss nodded. The particular nod of someone who’d expected less and was adjusting accordingly. "Fair."

They parted ways.

Orion walked back toward the manor.

Luna fell into step beside him immediately, silent until they were away from the outer path. "I heard," she said.

"I know."

"Tomorrow starts the window."

"Yes."

She was quiet for a moment. "Master should not leave the estate alone during that time."

"I’m not planning to."

"Or with only me," she said, which surprised him slightly. "I can handle most things but concealment-specialized attackers operating in a group are a different problem than direct confrontation. If they’re good enough to stage accidents, they’re good enough to split my attention."

He looked at her.

She was looking forward, ears slightly forward, tail still. Not anxious. Just operational.

"You’re thinking tactically," he said.

"Master is a target," she said simply. "Thinking tactically is my job."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Doran," he said.

"He’s fourteen and hasn’t summoned yet." 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

"He’s perceptive and knows the estate better than I do and his mana signature is untrained enough that it doesn’t read as a threat." He thought about it. "He’s the right kind of person to have nearby in a situation where visible protection draws attention."

"And Voss."

"Voss is his own calculation." Orion looked at the manor coming into view. "We’ll see."

Aria had dinner ready. He ate. Doran’s list of cultivation-affecting compounds was on the desk and he checked it against what he’d been using, nothing he was currently taking, the relevant ones were standard pain compounds that he’d been avoiding anyway.

After dinner he sat at the desk and looked at the formation diagram again.

Four rings. Twelve points on the outer ring. Eight on the next. Five on the next. One at the center.

He’d been reading it as a spatial arrangement. A physical formation to be placed on the ground, like a summoning circle. But what if it wasn’t spatial.

What if it was sequential.

Twelve. Eight. Five. One.

He pulled up the system on a thought and looked at the cultivation screen.

◈ SOVEREIGN CULTIVATION ◈

Stage 1: 14%

Internal Mana Density: Low [Increasing]

Active Circulation: Unstable [Developing]

◈ ◈ ◈

Stage One. Stage Two would unlock after this. And after that presumably further stages.

He looked at the formation diagram.

If each ring was a stage. Four stages total, working inward toward the center. The points on each ring could represent something within the stage, specific developments, specific milestones, twelve elements in the first stage alone.

He was at fourteen percent of Stage One.

Fourteen percent of twelve.

He grabbed a piece of paper and wrote it out. Started cross-referencing what he knew about Stage On