The morning felt heavier than the ones before it, not because anything had changed outside the mansion, but because Elara could no longer ignore the way everything inside it seemed connected. The words Dante had spoken the previous day kept repeating in her mind, not as confusion anymore, but as structure slowly revealing itself through repetition. She no longer questioned whether there was a pattern, only how much of it she had already walked through without realizing.
She sat at the long table in the study room, papers spread out in front of her in an arrangement she did not create but had been asked to study. Each document carried names, companies, and quiet notes written in margins that made them feel less like records and more like decisions already in motion. Her fingers moved slowl
