They arrived back in Valdenmoor on the seventh day.
Five of them walking through the eastern gate at midmorning — Kael, Oren, Fen, Dael, and the two shorter-term Merren cases who had attached themselves to the group with the practical efficiency of people who had nowhere else to be and had decided that staying close to the person who had freed them was the most sensible available option until the school gave them a different orientation.
The Domain received them all.
Kael felt it the moment they crossed the boundary — the five blank multipliers entering the Domain simultaneously, the unclassified gifts running alongside each other in the clean honest System architecture, the specific resonance of five between-walkers with adjacent but distinct abilities finding the shared space.
It was nothing like one entering.
It was nothing like two.
