The letter arrived from Obsidian on a Wednesday, three weeks after the disclosure statement went out.

Not the monthly report through Vael's delegation. A personal message, sent directly through the broadcast channel in reverse, which meant he had learned to use the infrastructure the distribution had restored.

Marina felt it arrive while she was running the morning check and almost missed it because Obsidian's frequency signature had changed.

Not dramatically. Subtly, in the way that signatures changed when a practitioner's relationship to their own magic shifted over time. His core frequency was the same, eastern origin, cold and structured, the specific quality of a system that had been built for...