Lucen smirked faintly and threw the spell anyway, a crescent of pale force that cleaved the training dummy into halves.
Varik didn't react. He was only half-watching the spell. The other half of his attention stretched outward, beyond the chamber walls, brushing against the threads no one else could sense.
It was subtle. Too subtle for anyone under S-rank to pick up. A faint shift in the mana lattice of the air, the way a shadow clung a second too long at a corner, how the resonance of silence changed when an observer leaned in.
'Division Black,' Varik thought.
He didn't smile. Didn't frown either. He simply let the knowledge settle like a knife hidden beneath his coat.
Lucen dropped onto the bench, dragging a towel over his face. "You've been staring holes in the wall for the last ten minutes. Either I'm more interesting than you want to admit, or you've got something stuck in your teeth."
Varik's gaze shifted to him. "You feel it?"
