Power does not abandon force when it fails.
It teaches it to speak softly.
The city wakes to normalcy.
That is the first warning sign.
Patrols are fewer this morning. Candles no longer linger at corners or test space with bodies. The junction where the first line held is empty, clean, almost deliberately ordinary. No notices hang from the walls. No volunteers stand in pairs watching who passes.
To anyone who wanted the tension gone, it looks like relief.
To anyone who has learned how power breathes, it looks like strategy.
Kael feels it immediately.
Not as threat.
As absence.
The shadow coils beside him, uneasy.
This quiet is intentional.
“They’ve pulled back,” Rowan says as they walk the southern loop. “No pressure. No presence.”
Kael scans the street. Vendors laugh too easil
