From a side room, a boy’s voice, sharp and imperious, cut through the silence.

Naoya Zen’in, thirteen and already carrying himself with the entitled rigidity of a future clan head, watched them go with a curl of his lip. Pathetic.

Then he felt it.

A ripple in the air, a pressure—controlled, immense, and utterly foreign to him. It wasn’t the muted emptiness of a non-sorcerer, nor the usual subdued flicker from the clan’s women. This was a deep, resonant hum, like a power line buried in the earth.

His head snapped toward the corridor.

A woman was walking past the open doorway. She was short, but to his not-yet-fully-grown height, she seemed tall. Hip-length white hair, straight and stark against the dark blue of her simple yukata. One hand was tucked into the opposite sleeve for warmth; the other rested lightly above her obi, the posture relaxed yet alert.

Naoya stood frozen in the doorway, watching her go.