Rain lashed the glass façade of the United Nations headquarters like it was trying to wash the lies off.
Inside, the Security Council chamber hummed with false calm. Polished wood, hushed voices, diplomats in tailored suits pretending the world hadn't cracked open three times in as many weeks.
Aria stood at the back, arms crossed, soaked through. No invitation. No escort. She'd walked past checkpoints, ignored ID scanners, and stepped over two unconscious guards who'd tried to stop her. Not with violence. Just presence. Like gravity had shifted when she entered the building.
She wasn't here as a mother. Or a rebel.
She was here as a reckoning.
On the main screen, a split feed showed Lysander's masked envoys—hooded figures standing in a ruined Parisian square—and Victoria's remote delegate, a crisp AI avatar with her voice but none of her tells. Both sides were "negotiating." Neither mentioned the twenty-three children still missing in Geneva after the last dimensional bleed.
