The air changed first.
Not visibly. Not with sound or color or any dramatic signal a man could point to and name. It simply 'changed' — the way pressure changes before a blade finds its mark, the atmosphere of the room compressing inward from every wall simultaneously, landing on every chest, every throat, every sitting spine at the same moment.
The sword domain.
Not the full weight of it. Not the total, annihilating pressure he'd used the night before when skulls had converted to mist without ceremony. This was the 'edge' of it — the controlled, deliberate release of something vast choosing to present only its outermost fraction, the way a man shows you the tip of a blade he is not yet swinging.
It was enough.
Culliver's paper fell from his hands. He did not pick it up.
Renwick's hand found his own throat again and this time stayed there, fingers pressing like he was checking if it was still attached.
