The voice that bled through the crystal was not merely a sound; it was a presence. It possessed that terrifying, razor-sharp quality. Celestina always carried the tone of a woman whose intellect moved so far ahead of the present moment that her words felt like echoes of a conclusion she had already reached.
There was no warmth in her greeting, only a chilling, surgical precision. She didn't waste breath on pleasantries; she used her voice like a scalpel, calibrated to dissect the silence.
"You went silent four months ago," she said, her voice cutting through the dawn mist like a blade. "The timing is notable, Zane."
"In our line of work, coincidence is just a word for a pattern we haven't understood yet."
Zane swallowed hard, his eyes scanning the horizon, feeling the weight of her gaze even through the magical link.
"The timing was operational," he replied, forcing his voice into a steady, professional clip. "The underlayer was developing monitoring gaps."
