Nevara
The palace felt different in the morning.
Not calmer.
Just quieter in a way that made the tension easier to feel.
Normally mornings here were predictable. Staff moved through the halls with quiet efficiency, guards rotated shifts, and somewhere down the corridor someone inevitably burned the first pot of coffee in the kitchen.
Today there was none of that rhythm.
The building was alert.
Focused.
Urgent.
When I stepped into the council room, the reason was obvious.
Two of the long conference tables had been pushed together and covered in maps, tablets, and printed intelligence reports. Satellite images glowed across three different screens mounted along the wall. A digital map of the northern territories filled the largest monitor, red markers blinking across forested areas
