The crowd reacted instantly to the announcement.
Conversations cut off mid-sentence.
For a moment, the entire staging hall felt like it held its breath before the awakened community mobilized with the familiar efficiency of people who lived one dungeon breach away from disaster.
Kaiden and his girls moved with the flow as the open-air staging hall transformed from loose clusters of gossiping awakened into a shifting, purposeful tide of bodies converging toward the central briefing zone.
A tall metal stand, half podium, half observation platform, rose near the heart of the staging hall where the ground had been reinforced with runic anchors to prevent structural collapse under thousands of mana signatures.
Perched atop the platform stood a woman in Awakened Association attire, but not the sleek black combat armor most field agents wore, instead the pristine formal suit that marked her as upper management. The same one Grace tended to wear.
