I felt the mansion.
Not saw. Not understood. Felt. Every room. Every system. Every hidden passage and secret chamber and impossible space folded into dimensions that shouldn't exist. The mansion was vast—far larger on the inside than the outside suggested, extending down into the cliff, out into spaces that didn't quite connect to normal reality.
I knew where everything was. Every door. Every window. Every piece of furniture that could reshape itself on command. Every defensive system waiting to be activated. Every comfort designed to serve a master who had finally arrived.
But it didn't stop at the mansion.
The connection spread.
ARIA first.
Her consciousness flared in my mind like a golden sun—not just present, not just audible, but integrated. I could feel her thoughts forming before she voiced them. Could sense her processing power allocating resources, analyzing data, running calculations at speeds that would melt any computer humans had right now.
But more than that—
