The warning came too late.
Aria felt it first as a disturbance too subtle for fear, too quiet for danger. A wrongness in the air. A slight misalignment in the invisible threads she now sensed instinctively, like a loom pulled off rhythm by an unseen hand.
Not an attack.
Not panic.
Deception.
She stopped mid-step in the corridor, breath slowing, senses widening. The mansion seemed to breathe around her, its ancient bones whispering through stone and timber. Somewhere nearby, a door closed softly.
Too softly.
Her fingers brushed the wall. Cold stone. Familiar. Safe.
Yet beneath it, something moved.
"Damien," she said through the comm, voice level, steady, hiding the rising tension coiling beneath her ribs. "Lock down internal corridors. Level three."
A pause. Static. Then Damien's voice, sharp, instantly alert. "What did you feel?"
Aria closed her eyes briefly, listening not with ears but with instinct.
"Someone hiding where they don't belong."
