Chapter 91

Aria's POV

Venn's presentation at the regional gathering was, by every account I received, exceptional.

She wrote to me the day after. Not the careful formal letter of our earlier correspondence but something faster, less composed, still precise but warmer — the writing of someone who had just experienced something significant and needed to tell it to the right person before the feeling settled into ordinary memory.

She'd presented on threshold disorientation. Had taken Gorvan's framework, which I'd shared with her after reading his documents, and applied it to her own experience of arriving at Shadow Peak. Personal testimony structured by theoretical framework. The combination had been more...