Chapter 91

• The war room felt different when Kael and Angelica returned.
• Not different in the way rooms feel after long absences — the furniture rearranged, the lighting shifted, familiar things made strange by time. It was different the way a room feels when the people who walk into it are no longer who they were. The walls seemed to lean back slightly, as if the Nexus itself was making space.
• Kael stood at the threshold of the dimensional gate, Angelica a half-step behind him. The five teams were assembled — Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omega, along with Elyndor and Zareth, who stood apart from the others with the quiet watchfulness of people who had seen this moment before, or something very much like it, and knew better than to rush toward it.