Catherine's POV
Fear did not arrive as chaos.
That was the first thing I noticed.
No racing heart. No trembling hands. No sudden urge to act. Those were reactions of people who lost control emotionally. I had not. I was still calm. Still upright. Still capable of explaining every decision I had made.
Fear, when it finally reached me, arrived as misalignment.
A single data thread refused to resolve.
I noticed it first in the aftermath reports - the way the mountain's surge was being described differently depending on who wrote the summary. Structural anomaly. Authority feedback loop.
Environmental correction. No consensus. No stable language.
I pulled three reports side by side.
The first, from a senior witch: "Ley-line resonance collapsed when authorization pathway severed."
The second, from a patrol captain: "Mountain reacted to Luna's withdrawal as if attacked."
The third, from a healer: "Natural correction following prolonged artificial suppression."
