Vencian narrowed his eyes and held them there. The old man's sentence had ended, but one word stayed lodged. He repeated it out loud, slow and flat, letting it sit between them.
"They?"
His stance did not change. His attention stayed tight, aimed past the man's face and into what the word carried. The man's breath moved, the sleeve at his wrist twitched, the floorboard under his heel creaked. Vencian watched those instead.
"They," he said again, and then he named it. "Pentarch."
He said the name without weight, the way one sets a tool on a table. His eyes tracked the man's shoulders and the line of his jaw, waiting for reflex to arrive before thought. The pause that followed gave him enough. Alignment did not require agreement. It required response, and the response had already begun forming in the man's body.
