The words arrived with the volume of something spoken at normal conversational distance, heard only by the person they were aimed at, delivered with the specific casualness of someone who has learned to pass messages in environments where passing messages should not be visible.
Kael continued walking.
The caretaker continued sweeping.
For a fraction of a second, an Eclipse symbol appeared beneath the broom's path through the dust — precise, deliberate, gone before anything without specifically attuned perception would have registered it.
Kael's journey, which had brought him from the capital's crossroads through months of travel and one brief encounter with a traveler whose eyes had held galaxies, had not concluded at the Celestial Academy's gates.
It had simply found its next chapter's starting point.
"Aether Ashborn."
