The data-stream was silent.
Too silent.
Kairos sat in the core chamber of the Unyielding Trust, overlooking the Trade Nexus—a glittering sphere of relays, comm arrays, and AI-runled merchant threads connecting thousands of systems.
Everything looked fine.
And that's what worried him most.
Two Guild Masters had fallen—Kalthus, the Architect, and Morrow, the Soul Broker.
But now... the quiet.
It was unnatural.
"Kessie," Kairos said. "Run a complete back-channel audit. Focus on micro-relays. Trade signatures under sovereign jurisdiction."
The AI responded instantly.
"Processing... Anomaly detected.""Three hundred and twelve merchant channels marked authentic are ghost-flagged under Sector Tyran Protocol—there is no record of us establishing such a protocol."
Kairos froze.
"They've already infiltrated our network."
The Tyrant's Seal
Kairos stood in the Council Hall ten minutes later.
He slammed a data shard onto the central display.
