Location:Obsidian Academy — Workshop, Second Segment
Date/Time:15 Infernorest, 9939 AZI
Realm:Lower Realm
The problem was distribution.
Jayde had been staring at the formation array for twenty minutes without blinking, and she'd stopped caring. The workshop was empty — first bell hadn't rung, the other students wouldn't arrive for another hour, and the amber glow of the ceiling inscriptions turned the practice parchment into a map of everything that was wrong with her design.
Radial distribution from a central node. Doha standard. Elegant. Wasteful.
She tapped the end of her ink pen against her bottom lip. Once. Twice. The rhythm her hand fell into when her conscious mind was elsewhere — a habit she'd never noticed in this body, carried forward from a life where it had driven Lieutenant Kira's cybernetic eyes to narrow every time she did it during mission briefings.
