The pulse arrived before the knock .
Not sound — sensation. The shadow domain architecture of the Temple moving through every practitioner in the building simultaneously at the Hour of First light , the pulse traveling through the ambient concentration the way a current traveled through water — present everywhere in the medium at once , arriving without direction , registering in shadow affinity as a brief strong pressure rather than as a sound or a signal .
Shadow Sense at 2/20 received it as the binary detection producing a single sharp pulse — strong , then gone , then the standard ambient overwhelming concentration resuming . Not painful . The specific quality of something designed to communicate rather than to do anything else .
Kei was awake before the knock arrived .
