Lucien invoked Structural Insight.
The world peeled open.
He tilted his head upward.
At first he saw nothing unusual.
Then his perception slipped one layer deeper, into the framework beneath.
And he saw it.
A distortion threaded through the sky like an invisible net.
A presence.
It was everywhere at once, but not in the way an ocean was everywhere. This was more precise.
Lucien's breath caught.
This method was familiar.
It was the same principle Kaia used when she became flame, when her "self" stopped being a body and became a phenomenon.
But this was different in a way.
Kaia's transformation was an intensification. Her existence tightened into a single element until the world could only define her as fire.
This Liberator's method was the opposite.
Instead of condensing, she had stretched.
Lucien's eyes narrowed as Structural Insight mapped the clauses.
A being was normally held together by dense strings of existence.
Those strings were meant to stay taut.
