"Rodion, tag them as Blight variants."
Sixteen meters. That was too close for comfort.
He tapped the table with two fingers, thinking in fast spirals. He needed more data—guard rotations, blind spots, magical wards—and he needed it before those rune-etched things got curious.
He opened the tablet fully, flipping the chipped hinge so the screen lay flat. His stylus emerged from a magnetic slot. The local-mapping software flickered offline but alive, showing a ghostly schematic built from ant breadcrumbs. Each micro unit left a trace that triangulated itself back to the central hub: green for workers, amber for soldiers. The lines formed a rough star around his room.
He quick-sketched a circle over the corridor intersection: High traffic. A square on a nearby alcove: Potential vantage. A triangle by his door: Surveillance risk.
