I woke before the palace lights eased to morning. Habit.
The ops wing was already awake. Reika stood by the wall display with coffee and a slate. Seraphina had a pencil behind her ear. Cecilia leaned against a column, calm enough to make other people fix their posture. Tiamat and Lyra arrived together, quiet as rain on stone.
Before anything else, Lyra gave us a threat brief. She kept it clinical.
"Concord watchlist item," she said, and brought up a clipped image on the screen—pink hair, a smile that was wrong in a way you felt before you could name it. "Alias: the Red Chalice Emissary. Human. A long kill record against our outposts. Do not engage if sighted unless you are Divine-rank or have a Divine sponsor present. If she appears near our operations, you evacuate and I handle it."
Nobody argued. The room tightened the quiet way good teams do when a real problem is named.
When the others moved off, I caught Lyra by the window. The light was flat and kind.
