The muted clink of cutlery and the soft hiss of the skyline beyond glass had a strangely calming effect. Inside the restricted dining room the noise of the restaurant faded to a distant hum, replaced by low music and the faint aroma of roasted herbs. The attendant had just retreated after taking their order, leaving a chilled carafe of water and a basket of warm bread between them.
Elias had his elbows on the table, fingers steepled, and eyes unfocused on the glass wall as if it were a schematic. "It's like a closed-loop simulation," he said at last, more to himself than to Victor. "An ether system feeding back into itself. Normally when I touch someone with red ether, I can see the lines, the puppets, and the control nodes. With you…" He shook his head slowly, as though trying to redraw a diagram in his mind. "With you it wasn't strings. It was… like standing in the middle of a reactor watching every valve open at once."
