The first sign of trouble came twenty-three minutes after the Starfall victory.
Ren noticed it during his expanded surveillance mission, but the problem was so subtle that even his enhanced Disruptor senses almost missed it. Fragment spawn locations were shifting by just a few inches—tiny changes that would be invisible to anyone not actively watching the system's patterns.
But those inches represented big alterations to the star correlation patterns that Lyra's predictions were based on.
From his hidden observation position, Ren watched his team execute another perfect collection cycle. Runners moved to calculated positions with mechanical precision, arriving exactly when Lyra's models predicted fragments would appear.
Except they didn't.
Three fragments spawned two feet away from where they were supposed to be. A fourth appeared eight seconds late. A fifth showed up with different magical energy that made it harder to collect safely.
