The information did not arrive as a report.
It moved the way most things did when they were not meant to be contained, passing from one voice to another, losing precision but gaining weight with every step. By the time it reached him, it no longer sounded like an event. It sounded like a shift.
He did not interrupt the man speaking.
He stood by the window, listening without turning, his attention fixed outward as if the city itself could confirm what he was hearing. The tone alone was enough to separate truth from exaggeration. People did not lower their voices for nothing.
"They said he moved himself," the man continued carefully. "Not through anyone else. Directly."
That was the part that mattered.
The rest could be adjusted, dismissed, reshaped into whatever version people preferred to believe. This could not.
Lucian Devray did not move without reason.
He did not involve himself without purpose.
That had not changed.
"What triggered it," he asked.
