War, Aria realized, did not escalate loudly.
It sharpened.
The estate woke before dawn, but not naturally. Systems came online in staggered pulses rather than synchronized harmony. Peripheral nodes reported clean. Core networks held. Yet the pattern felt wrong, too deliberate, too selective.
Dante noticed it at the same moment she did.
"Someone's touching the edges," he said, standing before the central display. "Not breaching. Testing."
"Not testing," Aria replied, already scrolling through secondary feeds. "Mapping response time."
She zoomed in on a minor logistics relay, one Dante barely used anymore. The data traffic there was anomalous, thin but precise, like a blade tracing the outline of bone.
"He wants to know how fast we bleed," she continued. "And who notices first."
Dante's jaw tightened. "Cassian."
"Yes."
Not a question. A recognition.
Silence settled between them, not heavy, focused.
"Did the message trigger ripple outward?" Dante asked.
