The night did not break when the message stopped scrolling. It settled. In the quiet suites, three small screens dimmed by a notch as if the words themselves needed to rest.
The mansion kept breathing, the wards held their glow, the laughter down the corridor fell away, and the house tucked itself in, calm by choice, not by ignorance.
Elsewhere, the world stayed awake.
The Superpower Association headquarters was all glass and stone and guarded hum, a hive that never truly slept.
Elevators moved without sound through a spine of steel. Floors sighed as filtered air changed directions.
Outside, the city lay like a grid of stars turned on their sides.
Inside, on the topmost level behind three layers of locked doors and one wall that was not a wall at all, the director stood with his palms on a desk and did not notice that his tea had gone cold.
He had been reading the same paragraph for longer than he would admit. Not because he could not understand it, but because he could.
