Sena was right, as always.

Calenne came to the following morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after that. No fanfare, no announcement — just showed up at the corner table around the same time every day, while Sena set her cup on the table before she even sat down, continuing their discussion where they had left off.

On the fourth day, the UI stopped providing an update after every interaction and began passive monitoring for extended periods of time, signaling that the arc had achieved its rhythm in-game.

CALENNE — PASSIVE MONITORING

Relationship / Kai: 41

Corruption meter: 7/100 — rising

Mood: Present / Settled

Wiki status: 89% — GENERATING 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Note: Establishment phase ongoing — meter movement consistent / no mechanics engaged

Seven. The speed that seemed to be determined by the game as appropriate for a person with a nine seventy-one bond with her son, anyway, I cut that thought short and filed it away under ’things I’m still figuring out how to talk about.’

The conversations moved to a higher plane on the third day. The first two were all business — Calenne mapping out Ashveil, its people, the same meticulous process with which she approached anything. On the third morning, she knew enough that the questions concerning information stopped, and a different conversation started — the one you can only have once there’s sufficient baseline between you two.

By the fourth morning, she asked about Floor 7.

It was not in the same way that Esta did — Esta’s questions were straightforward and practical, asking about details regarding what sort of work it was like on the seventh floor. Calenne’s were different. She had run into Mira the day before — I timed them from across the market area, Mira with her crossbow and sharp tone, Calenne with her assessing gaze, two minutes of talking before they went their separate ways.

I wasn’t sure what they had discussed. Not even the close proximity of the UI had been sufficient for a full transcript of their conversation.

"Your friend," Calenne began. "The one with the crossbow. She mentioned Floor 7."

"Mira. Yes."

"She said that you have met something on Floor 7 that doesn’t behave the way anything below does."

"That’s correct."

Calenne glanced at her cup. "She said that you haven’t engaged it. You’ve only been studying it."

"Correct again."

"Why."

I considered the unit on Floor 7, its head tilted at a thirty-degree angle, the confirmation of its learning curve, the open-palmed signal meaning ’wait’. "Engagement requires the assumption that it is hostile," I said, "and we lack the evidence for that assumption yet."

Calenne fell silent. There was something working beneath her gaze, another long evaluation coming to completion. "That’s not a typical method for someone who runs dungeons," she said.

"I doubt that most dungeon runners have Pattern Recognition II," I replied.

Her lips moved — a silent correction. "Or the patience for it."

The wiki updated, reaching ninety-one percent completeness.

We left it like that for a few moments, while the morning market took place outside. Sena was doing whatever Sena did between her cup deliveries, which I had yet to see before.

"He came to see me," Calenne started, not needing to specify Vorn. "Two days ago."

"How was it."

Calenne thought about how to answer such an important question for some moments. "He is different," she said. "Not the way Esta told us about him. Esta described changed, but by direction. I saw direction, but..." A pause. "...also its cost."

I didn’t reply.

"He is lighter," she said. "This is a word I keep thinking about when talking about this. As if he was carrying something for ages and laid it down recently." She looked into my eyes. "It happens sometimes. When you carried something for too long that you’ve forgotten you even carry it."

I remembered standing in the market, watching Daren and Lyra at nine hundred and seven.

"Yes," I replied. "You do."

Calenne regarded me with those understanding eyes of hers and did the calculating, measuring, assessing thing — the extended kind, running the new variables into the old equation and weighing them. "You know what that is like," she remarked. "From the inside."

"Indeed."

"Very recently."

"Recently enough."

She made the slow, deliberating nod. "Vorn told me that you had something on your person when he met you. He did not go into any detail, but he knew what the quality was like."

Vorn must have talked a bit more than I expected of him. Still, I maintained my mask. "Vorn notices things when he isn’t running his little show."

"That has always been his way," Calenne said. "Especially when he was just a boy. Vorn saw everything."

There was a change in her tone — the hint of a matronly undertone, underlying the calm exterior. "For a while there, I was afraid for him. For what he might do with all that seeing."

"He did something challenging with it for many years," I responded. "Until one day he stopped."

"Because you asked him to."

Calenne was silent. Eyes moving from her cup to the table, then back to mine. That look, doing its thing again — no, not grief, something more dynamic than that. The face of someone used to carrying their own burden but now dealing with a new perspective on it.

"I should have asked," she said. In a whisper. Not playing regret — just stating the obvious fact she had come to understand. "Years ago. I saw how he was turning out and I didn’t dare ask."

"Not necessarily your job to ask," I told her. "It was a specific requirement. Someone not involved in the stakes of the situation."

"Yet you were?"

"In a different way. I wasn’t protecting myself — I was protecting someone else. And Vorn was merely an ancillary detail in that regard — which meant that I was free to ask without having any one specific response in mind."

Calenne studied me for a long time. The whole diagnostic process in full effect all at once. "You certainly have a clear perspective on your position in this matter," she noted.

"Of course I do. It hasn’t been a secret until today."

"How much time?"

"Enough."

But the truth was she understood how she took everything in and did something about it. But she sensed a change in the room in a way that happens when there is a conversation about something true and comes out the other side of it.

The UI updated.

CALENNE — STATUS

Relationship / Kai: 58

Corruption meter: 14/100 — climbing

Mood: Present / Processing

Wiki status: 94% — GENERATING

Note: Establishment phase deepening — emotional register engaged / meter movement consistent / no mechanics engaged

Fourteen.

It was marked. I paid attention to it but made no move in that direction. This arc was being taken seriously by the game and so was I.

Calenne put down her cup and sat there for a second with both hands resting on the table in the same way that she used to sit while weighing whether or not to say something that had been waiting to be said.

"Esta told me you were worth my time," she said. "I told her I knew the signs." A pause. "What I really should have told her was — I knew the signs because I saw the same thing myself."

I couldn’t produce something appropriate to that, so I just didn’t produce anything.

She stood. She straightened herself out. "Tomorrow," she said. Definitely not a question.

"Tomorrow," I echoed.

And she walked out.

Ninety-four percent was still wiki content, and the corruption meter was showing fourteen, and the canal continued its canal business, and Sena appeared and took my cup without saying a word, and life in the city continued its usual afternoon processes.

971.

14 corruption.

58 relationship.

Slowed down quite a bit, this calculation, carried more emotional resonance than any I’d ever done before. As far back as I went, the roadmap had been correct on this one.

I sat in front of an empty table and considered what Vorn had said — how he knew there was an excellence in whatever it was I held inside me. How Calenne saw it when she looked at me, and she had called it what Esta called it.

Now the wiki hit ninety-five percent.

Still running numbers.