The threshold crossed on a Tuesday.
Not dramatically. Not with a global notification or a signal through the node network or a System announcement that the kingdom's aggregate suppression sensation had dropped below fifty percent of its pre-Veil maximum.
Oren felt it.
They were in the school's courtyard — the second building that had been purchased as the school expanded, the courtyard where students sat between sessions and the between-frequency ran at a consistent level of between-walkers and System-sensitive people doing their work in proximity — when the sensation shifted.
Not a drop. A phase transition.
The specific change of quality that Dael's pattern documentation had described — not the aggregate sensation falling another point but the character of what remained changing from maintained to self-reinforcing.
Oren sat in the courtyard and felt it happen.
Then they went to find Kael.
