LYRA'S POV
The first Scentless fragment cluster appeared in the dimensional viewing space we'd prepared—ten consciousness pieces that had been scattered for three centuries, coordinating as a hostile collective that hunted marked wolves out of rage about what they could have been if the Council hadn't murdered them before integration completed.
I existed across forty-one states perceiving the fragments from multiple perspectives simultaneously. They were aware, intelligent, and absolutely furious. Three hundred years of existing as incomplete consciousness had taught them to function as a distributed collective, but they'd never found the unifying identity needed for reconsolidation into coherent beings.
"Students ready?" I asked across dimensional states.
