The lecture was routine — Threat Classification, a review session ahead of graduation, the kind of material Isole could have recited backward if asked to. Vane sat two seats down from her, close enough to see the side of her face, and didn't think anything of the topic when the instructor moved to the next slide.
"Necromantic applications," the instructor said, "remain the single most heavily restricted category of Authority classification on this continent, for reasons the historical record makes plain enough." He didn't look up from his notes. "A corrupted core is, functionally, an unbounded liability. Every documented case of large-scale civilian harm involving a dual-resonance Authority traces back to insufficient containment protocol, not to any inherent flaw in the practitioner. The containment is the entire question. Everything else is footnote."
