The notifications were doing too much.
They were stacking faster than he could read them, golden text layering over golden text, the system completely abandoning its usual restraint and just going for it. Orion put up a hand on instinct like he could physically slow them down.
"System. Pause."
They froze.
All of them. Suspended mid-stack in the dim stone room like someone had hit a button on reality. He'd never tried that before and the fact that it worked was its own interesting data point.
He looked at what was on the table first. Before the notifications. Before anything else.
Because it demanded to be looked at.
It was a book.
