The water in the porcelain basin had turned a diluted, rusty crimson, a stark visual testament to the violence that had been violently scrubbed from my skin. Elara discarded the stained cloth over the edge of the basin, her movements deliberate and unhurried. The silence in the master suite of the Glass Sanctuary was no longer the heavy, suffocating quiet of unspoken trauma; it was the resonant, peaceful stillness of a battlefield after the final treaty has been signed.
She turned away for a brief moment, moving toward the sleek, brushed-steel vanity in the en-suite bathroom. When she returned, she carried a heavy, military-grade trauma kit—a standard fixture in every VanceTech safehouse, stocked with enough synthetic bio-gel, sutures, and combat bandages to stabilize a fractured kinetic
