SOFIA
The house didn’t just settle; it braced.
At first glance, everything seemed to have returned to that familiar, cold equilibrium with the same polished corridors, the same hushed conversations, the same quiet structure that had defined my life here from the very beginning. But underneath the surface, something had shifted permanently. The response to the threat hadn’t faded once the danger was neutralized; it had embedded itself into the very DNA of the house.
Security was no longer just a series of checkpoints. It was layered, thick and suffocating.
There were no gaps now. There were no more moments where my movements went unobserved or unaccounted for. Every transition which was from my bedroom to the dining hall, from one wing to the next was anticipated long before I even took
