The victory doesn’t feel like one.
The cathedral rescue stabilizes the public narrative, yes.
But inside Blackthorn, something is wrong.
The air feels brittle.
Not tense.
Not chaotic.
Just… wrong.
Morgan senses it first.
“It’s not divine instability,” she says quietly in the war room.
“Then what?” Kieran asks.
“It’s structural.”
My stomach tightens.
We’ve been chasing external fracture.
But structural means internal.
Morgan pulls up internal communication logs again.
“Two days before the cathedral event,” she says slowly, “someone rerouted our patrol response time.”
Kade stiffens.
“That’s impossible. We locked internal routing after the last breach.”
“Not impossible,” Morgan replies.
“Just patient.”
The reroute shaved forty seconds off response time to the cathedral.
W
