For three days after the decision, nothing visibly changed. The sky returned to its ordinary hues. The pale band did not reappear. News sheets found other things to argue about. Markets stabilized. The capital exhaled.
People wanted to believe it was over.
Only those who knew where to listen felt the difference.
Within the Southern Archive, the sealed corridors stayed open. Not because alarms were ringing but because the silence inside them had altered. Old instruments that measured long-range mana flow showed no spikes, no chaos. Instead, their needles drifted slowly, consistently, in one direction, as if responding to a tide rather than a storm.
Ervin watched them without comment.
"The lattice is relaxing," one archivist murmured. "Like a muscle letting go."
Ervin did not correct him.
Muscles relaxed after strain.
Structures relaxed before collapse.
Far from the Archive, preparation for the return of the first key began without any information.
