Victor remained at his desk until the early hours of the morning. When he finally got up, it was not because he had come to any significant conclusion; it was simply that sitting there was not helping him think anymore.
He walked to the window.
The Iron Wolf Clan compound was quiet at this hour, the training grounds empty, the guard rotations moving through their intervals with the disciplined patience of people who understood that routine was the clan's most reliable defence against the particular kind of carelessness that crept in during uneventful nights.
Harold Kane had not been careless. That was the part Victor kept returning to. Forty years of field experience produced a cultivator who didn't make the kind of errors that resulted in dying in a forest alongside his disciple without sending any communication at all. No distress signal. No partial report. No message was dispatched before the situation deteriorated past the point where sending one was possible.
