The air in the dining hall shifted.
That was not the language of trained cursed specialists.
Trained specialists did not believe in superstition.
If they had said that, it was because whatever they had witnessed at that gate had unmade something in them, reaching past their training and touching the part of a person that lived in the dark long before cultivation existed.
"What did they see?" I asked.
My father was quiet for a long moment.
"A door," he said finally. "Just a door. Standing in the open air with nothing around it. No frame. No wall. No structure. Just a door." His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "And behind it, through the gap at the bottom, something like light. But moving. Breathing. Aware."
I said nothing.
My sister said nothing.
We both processed it the same way, quietly, the way dangerous information should be handled.
