The harbor was quiet the way only deep night produces, that kind of silence where even the water seemed to be holding its breath.
Noah stood at the release frame with the Category 4 beast core in his palm, its pulse visible as a faint amber glow between his fingers. He'd drawn it from storage without ceremony, no flash, no announcement, just reached into that internal space and pulled it forward until it sat warm and steady in his hand. No one had even noticed this.
The energy coming off it was subtle to anything without the sensitivity to read it, but to something built around bioelectric perception, something that hunted by reading the electrical signatures of living things, it would register like a fire in a dark room.
He closed his fingers loosely around it and waited.
An hour passed.
