The alarm carried through the Balance Branch, but it lacked the frantic edge that had defined every previous emergency. People moved quickly toward the observation decks, and yet nobody ran the way they had run four days ago, when the first traveler had stepped onto the Road and the entire building had briefly forgotten how to breathe.
They had learned something in the intervening days — that panic had never once helped them understand what the Roads were trying to show them, and that whatever was happening now would reveal itself at its own pace regardless of how quickly anyone arrived to see it.
Kael, Elira, Sarya, Grace, Father, Mara, and the three Witnesses gathered before the main observation window within minutes of each other, drawn by the same alarm from different corners of the Branch.
The First Road stretched exactly where it had always stretched. The Answer stood in its familiar patient stillness, unmoved by whatever had triggered the alert.
