Lorne stepped back just enough to free one hand without lowering his gun. He pulled a secure handset from inside his coat and pressed one coded command key. His voice was calm, almost ordinary, which made the moment feel worse.“This is Captain Lorne,” he said. “Initiate emergency response. Full tribunal deployment. Repeat, full tribunal deployment around the presidential office. Air support, armored support, and outer-ring containment. Move now.”There was only a short burst of static before the answer came back.“Confirmed.”Darius’s smile faltered.For a moment he tried to keep the expression alive, like a man holding a cracked mask against his face. His eyes moved quickly across the room, measuring distances, exits, and loyalties. But the calculation did not comfort him. Something had changed in the air. The balance he thought he controlled was beginning to lean somewhere else.Colonel Vale looked from Lorne to Ethan. “What have you done?”Ethan kept his eyes on Darius. “What

The first attendant’s face twitched, immediately halting his movement.For a moment it looked like anger might break through him, but fear held him where he stood. His hands remained stiff at his sides, his eyes wide and uncertain. The other attendants beside him looked no different. None of them dared to step forward.Years of silent obedience weighed on them like chains. Every man in that row had seen what happened to those who crossed Darius’s will. Promotions vanished. Families lost protection. Careers ended overnight. Fear had been the quiet architecture of this room for a very long time.They had lived too long inside the gravity of Darius’s power.Darius noticed their hesitation and straightened slightly, trying to gather what dignity he still had left. Even with a reddening face and shaken breath, he attempted to pull authority back around himself like a cloak.“You see?” he said hoarsely. “Even now they remember who—”The sentence never finished.For a brief second, Darius

The second call came before the silence from the first one had fully settled.Ethan had barely slipped his phone back into his pocket when it vibrated again. The screen lit up with another unknown number. For a brief moment, Ethan simply stared at the glowing digits. Unknown numbers rarely meant good news anymore. Tonight, they meant something else entirely. They meant that word had already spread through the Herold command structure faster than anyone expected.He stopped in the corridor, the dim wall lights throwing soft gold across the portraits and polished floor, and looked at it without expression.Captain Lorne’s eyes narrowed. “Another one?” The captain’s tone carried a mixture of suspicion and quiet irritation. Only minutes earlier, a lieutenant general had tried to defect. If the pattern continued, the palace incident had already shaken the entire military hierarchy. Ethan answered the call. “Speak.”A rougher voice came through this time. “Hello master Ethan, this is Bri

The first thing Ethan noticed when he entered his bedroom was the smoke.The smell reached him before the sight did.It was the slow, bitter scent of tobacco mixed with something sweet and sharp from the alcohol.It was the kind of smell that belonged to long nights and dangerous thoughts.It hung in the warm air in thin grey ribbons, drifting lazily beneath the soft ceiling lights as if the room belonged to someone with no reason to fear tomorrow. Selene stood near the wide window in a dark silk robe, one hand holding a cigarette between two calm fingers, the other resting around a half-empty glass. The city lights behind her turned her into a sharp silhouette for a second before she shifted and looked fully at her husband Ethan.For a second Ethan wondered how long she had been standing there watching the city.The thought crossed his mind that she might have been waiting for him long before the convoy entered the mansion gates.She did not look surprised.She looked almost amused

The news left Ethan standing still long after the television stopped feeling like just a screen.General Darius’s face remained on it, hard and bruised and burning with the kind of fury that only came after public humiliation. The words civil war still seemed to hang in the room, heavier than the smoke, heavier than the silence, heavier than the night outside.Ethan looked at Selene again.She was calm.That was what disturbed him most.For a second, the fear in him changed shape. It was no longer only fear of the war. It was fear of how accurately she had seen it coming. She had spent the evening in silk, smoke, and silence, yet somehow she had spoken of the future like she had already walked through it and returned.He let out a slow breath. “This is insane.”Selene set her glass down, then reached for the bottle again. “No,” she said. “It’s predictable.”Ethan laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “You say that like Darius declaring civil war on national television is some