Alistair felt the difference the moment Lucian left the younger layers.
It was nothing, not really. Not a message, not anything that he could parse through normal means. More like a pressure line going slack somewhere only blood and old rank could feel. One second the boy's presence was still a press against the wider field, sharp and unbound and impossible to miss. The next, that press had moved off the map and on to routes most living things never learned to notice.
Alistair stood in the center of the ruined inheritance seat, chuckled under his breath.
"No goodbye to your old man," he said to the empty dark. "Polite as ever."
