Kael slept for ten hours.
Not because he decided to — because his body and the Class and the Domain and the Evaluator gift settling into his framework simultaneously presented sleep not as an option but as a requirement and declined to accept negotiation.
He woke at eight in the morning to the sound of the clinic running and the school running and the oversight board meeting upstairs and Wren's threading carrying updates from forty-seven cities and the Kingdom-Wide Inscription embedded in every connected node in the kingdom doing its quiet persistent work.
He lay on the cot for eleven minutes.
Not thinking. Just receiving.
The Domain at five kilometers. The Sovereign bonds — Maren, the Warden, Vael's passive boundary presence — all running at their normal quality but with something added, the Evaluator gift not yet fully expressed, settling into the framework the way new growth settles into an established root system. Present. Developing. Not yet legible.
