Location:Obsidian Academy — Jayde's quarters
Date/Time:Late Infernorest, 9941 AZI
Realm:Lower Realm
The ink smelled wrong.
Not bad. Just different. Cheaper. The Academy's supply had shifted three weeks ago, from Temple-certified brushwork ink to a local blend sourced through the mercenary company's trading network. It wrote thinner. Dried faster. Left a faintly mineral scent on the page, like wet stone after rain.
Jayde dipped her brush and kept writing.
The room was quiet. Not the silence of absence. She'd stopped cataloging that, or at least stopped letting it register as something that needed fixing. The bond was there, faint and warm and very far away, a thread pulled so thin it could've been mistaken for imagination. She didn't reach for it. Reiko was alive. That was enough to know. Anything more was a luxury she couldn't afford on a morning when three intelligence reports sat open on her desk, and all three said the same thing.
The Temple is losing.
