Loriel went still when she heard it all for the first time.
She'd known the broad shape of the crisis — had been living inside it for weeks, fighting its symptoms daily, watching the casualties mount, and the infected beast numbers climb. But the origin, the crack, the self-reinforcing loop that had been quietly building for years before anyone understood what they were actually dealing with — none of that had reached her.
The upset came first. Sharp and genuine, the feeling of being kept outside something important that directly concerned her world and her role in it. She was next in line for the Saintess position — confirmed, accepted, a matter of when rather than if. That made this her inheritance in every practical sense, and she'd been left outside it.
Then it subsided.
Even if I'd known, she thought, working through it honestly, what would I have done differently?
