Location:Virescent Expanse — Confederate Territory (External) / Raven's Soul Space (Internal)
Date/Time:TC1854.05.15-17
She was explaining aerial patrol integration to Tarek when the Kirin bead said enough.
Not in words. In a harmonic that rewrote every other signal in her awareness — a frequency shift so total that Tarek's voice became a sound from another room, then another building, then another world entirely. The bead had been measuring something. Through every healing. Through every hand pressed to poisoned soil. Through every soldier whose corroded metal she'd persuaded to cooperate with flesh. Counting. Weighing. Testing. And somewhere between the four hundredth act of choosing life over destruction and the conversation about Storm-Claw patrol routes, the count had reached a number that satisfied it.
"Raven?" Tarek's voice. Already distant.
