The warmth woke him up.
Not the room temperature, not Maren's ambient heat from wherever she was sleeping tonight.
This was under his skin, in his writing hand, the same residual burn that had been sitting there since Verath.
Except it wasn't in his hand anymore.
Soren sat up in the dark and looked at his left forearm.
Black text was growing on his skin.
Not tattooed, not inked from the outside.
The letters were forming from the inside, pushing through the tissue the way bruises surfaced hours after impact.
He turned his arm under the thin light from the window.
The words were small, tight, written in a hand that wasn't his.
You delayed my seed. I've accelerated another. Choose which one matters more.
Soren read it three times.
The Quill had created a two-way channel when he wrote his first sentence at the Verath Seed. Joan's debrief data confirmed the frequency match.
Yara's correction about the four hundred twelve percent output.
