The Living Oath network had been active for three weeks when the first echoes hit.
Aiden stood in the Worldship's central command chamber, arms crossed, watching the pulse map flicker across the holographic display. Green lines connected hundreds of worlds—steady, reliable.
Then a red spike flared on the outer fringe. Another followed on a neutral station near Ironseed territory. Not errors. Overlaps.
"Catherine, talk to me," he said.
Catherine leaned over the console, her fingers dancing across data overlays. "It's not a bug. It's leakage. Emotions, decisions, surface thoughts bleeding across nodes. A Nomad pilot out by Epsilon Reach just pulled a perfect rescue vector because he felt a medic's urgency from three systems away. Saved forty people."
She paused, eyes narrowing. "But then Commander Varak on the Ironseed border station started projecting paranoia. A song-weaver delegation nearly got shot down because he 'felt' they were saboteurs. They weren't."
