That day passed quietly inside the castle. No bursts of magic, no grim tidings from the outside world at least, for now.
As usual, Sylvia had been in her study since morning. The pile of documents shifted steadily across the long black marble desk: fortress construction reports, lists of logistic distribution, even small notes on the growth of experimental crops brought from another world. She signed, corrected, and stacked them again with mechanical precision.
Celes sat on the other side of the desk, her slender body leaning gracefully against the tall chair. Her elegant fingers moved swiftly, reordering the documents by priority, sometimes adding neat little annotations. From afar, the two looked like black and silver statues, working in silent harmony. Only the scratch of quills against parchment broke the stillness, occasionally interrupted by Sylvia's long sigh whenever she encountered a wrongly written or redundant report.
