Nothing had been heard of Iero for seven years.
This, if you think about it, is in itself suspicious. In ordinary life, when one of the few people who seriously work with extended perception drops off the radar for seven years, it’s one of three things: either he died (unlikely with Iero, biographically he has a resource reserve at least for another four hundred), or he went deep (possible, but then somewhere at the Academy there would be at least a rumor about him), or he is preparing (the variant that Wei Lin silently kept on the unofficial list for eight years). In quiet faith I chose the first, because the second tired me and the third frightened me.