Dante did not follow her immediately.
That, Aria noticed later, was the first true proof that something fundamental had changed.
In the old architecture of his world, movement demanded response.
Distance demanded correction.
Silence demanded interpretation.
He would have closed the gap reflexively, filled the space she left behind with presence, command, control.
Instead, he stayed where he was.
Watching not her body, but the consequences of her departure ripple outward.
The house responded first.
Not with alarms.
Not with visible recalibration.
But with uncertainty.
Staff hesitated at junctions where they once moved with clockwork precision. Guards exchanged glances instead of directives.
Systems that had been tuned around a single gravitational center, Dante's will, now waited for confirmation that never arrived.
The Moretti estate had been designed to orbit one sun.
Now it circled two.
And neither moved predictably anymore.
