The Chief's hand was still on the door.
She pushed it open.
The room was dark except for the desk lamp and the cultivation light.
She registered the cultivation light first — because the Chief was a cultivator, because her peripheral senses operated on cultivator's bandwidth, and the soft gold-grey glow pulsing from the woman against the desk was the specific, unmistakable light of a Core Formation advancement happening 'right now', this minute, in real time, which was the kind of thing that demanded a cultivator's attention before anything else.
Then she registered the woman against the desk.
Wren.
Wren, who she had known since Wren was twelve. Wren, who was one of her senior disciples, who had been Core Formation Early since spring, who had the most expressive face in the entire tribe and could not lie about anything.
