The figure stood in the ruined light of the Second Garden, and nobody in the operations room moved.
The transmission remained open. The figure didn't attack, didn't advance, didn't do anything except look toward the camera with an expression Sarya couldn't quite place — not hostile, not gentle either. Waiting.
Sarya took an instinctive step toward the screen.
Grace's hand rose, not forceful, just present. "Don't."
"Why?" Sarya asked.
"Because you don't know what's looking back."
The words settled into her, cold and precise. Whatever danger this figure represented, Grace was warning her that it wasn't necessarily the kind of danger you could brace your body against.
---
The figure spoke again, and this time it used a name — not the formal *Sarya* the world had come to know, but the shortened version, the one only a handful of people had ever called her.
The intimacy of it unsettled her more than hearing her own voice had.
