The Hall returned to its ordinary rhythm the next morning, and that, more than anything else, was what unsettled Lin Yue.
No lingering hum. No afterimage on the status screen. When he passed the gallery on his way to the atrium, the dormant board mounted along the far wall was exactly that — dormant, dark glass reflecting the corridor lighting back at him, no trace of the two words it had spent the night quietly repeating.
He stopped in front of it anyway.
Nothing.
Su Qing found him there an hour later, hands in her coat pockets, expression carefully unreadable in the way it always was when she'd already decided something and was waiting to see if he'd arrived at it too.
"You're checking the screen," she said.
"It's off."
"I checked at four in the morning. It was off then too." A pause. "I don't think it ever really turned on, Lin Yue. Not the way a System notice turns on."
"Then what was it?"
