They left Kael's Seat the next morning.
The director sent a monitoring package. More compact than the Vael's Crossing one, because he had spent eighteen months improving the design. He had also sent word to the Kael's Seat entity through the zone 20 connection—the first time Kai had asked the entity for anything operational rather than directional. He had asked it to extend its substrate reach west as far as the chain's architecture allowed and report anything it could read from the western region through the Architect's coordination layer.
The entity had understood and complied. It was reading at the limit of its unassisted reach. What it sent back through the coordination layer was minimal but consistent: pressure, rising, west.
He already knew. He walked faster anyway.
