Noise did not arrive as sound.

That was the first thing Draven understood.

There were no chants in the streets. No gatherings large enough to trigger coordination alerts. No spikes in emotional variance, no sudden drops in compliance metrics. The city remained calm—beautifully, efficiently calm.

And yet.

Something had changed in the way events failed to align.

Not broken. Not chaotic.

Misaligned—by fractions small enough to dismiss, but frequent enough to matter.

The ledger noticed ...