The storm had passed, but Aurelia still wore the scars of last night.
Outside Clock Tower, the streets were crowded with reporters, their cameras flashing in bursts that lit the wet pavement. Headlines screamed across every news feed: CLOCK CORP IN FREEFALL. Staff funneled in through the side entrances, shoulders hunched, clutching folders like shields. The air smelled of damp asphalt and burned circuitry—faint traces from the server rooms below still clinging to the building's vents.
The boardroom, usually a cathedral of control, was anything but.
Directors filed in with rumpled suits and sleepless eyes. One slammed his briefcase onto the table, papers spilling across polished obsidian. Another barked into his phone, voice hoarse: "No, we don't comment yet! Just—stall the press, damn it!" The low murmur of panic filled the air, louder than the rain that tapped steadily against the high windows.
Coffee cups littered the table, half-drained and trembling in restless hands. The scent of burnt espresso mingled with the sharp tang of sweat.
"Billions—wiped in one night."
"It can't be random. This was surgical."
"Where's the contingency plan? Where is Mira?"
The questions bounced like ricochets, no answers sticking.
Then the door opened.
Arkellin stepped through first.
His suit was immaculate, black against the pale light, the white streak in his hair stark above eyes unreadable. He walked with the unhurried certainty of a man who hadn't lost anything—each step measured, leather shoes striking the marble with quiet authority.
Behind him, Mira followed, her posture perfect despite the storm beneath her ribs. A fitted navy dress hugged her frame, heels clicking sharp as she crossed to the head of the table. She carried herself like the tower wasn't burning around her, though the faint stiffness in her stride betrayed the night before.
The room faltered.
Directors stilled in their seats, phones lowered, voices choked off mid-sentence. The chaos hadn't disappeared, but it bent—contained, however briefly—by the weight of their arrival.
Arkellin didn't speak. He didn't need to. He simply moved to Mira's right, pulled out the chair, and sat with a composure so deliberate it cut through the noise like glass. He folded his hands once on the table, the faintest curve of calm in his posture, and let the silence settle around him.
The directors exchanged glances, whispers restarting in lower tones. Mira adjusted her notes, pen poised between her fingers, mask of elegance firmly in place.
But it was Arkellin's presence that held the room.
Cool. Still. A blade sheathed, waiting.
And for the first time that morning, the board stopped arguing and started to listen.
The boardroom had steadied—on the surface.
Directors whispered behind hands, papers shuffled, numbers projected onto the glass wall with a faint electronic whine. Yet under the gloss, panic still throbbed.
Mira sat at the head of the table, spine straight, pen in hand. Her voice cut across the room, cool and clipped, anchoring men and women who had spent the night unraveling.
"We will not allow one night of disruption to dictate the future of Clock Corp," she declared. "We contain the breach, we move forward. That is the only agenda."
A few directors nodded, reassured by the ice in her tone. The rest shifted uneasily, their trust fraying.
Then the doors eased open again.
Myra entered as though the storm outside belonged to someone else. She didn't hurry, didn't even look flustered. Her blouse was pale silk, tucked into a skirt slit high enough to spark gossip even in this room of seasoned sharks. Her hair fell loose over her shoulders, gleaming under the recessed lights. She smiled faintly, knowingly, as every gaze turned.
"Don't mind me," she said, her voice a melody laced with steel. "I wouldn't dream of missing family business."
She crossed the room with languid grace, heels silent on the marble, and slipped into the empty chair opposite Arkellin. Her perfume—spiced vanilla—rose into the air, mingling with Mira's sharper jasmine.
The sisters didn't look at each other at first. The silence between them was a taut string, invisible but unbreakable.
Finally, Myra tilted her head, eyes narrowing, lips curling into that playful smirk. "You've changed, sister," she murmured, just loud enough to be heard across the table. "Softer. Sweeter. Is that his doing?"
The words landed like a blade slipped under armor.
Mira's pen stilled mid-line. Her jaw tightened a fraction, though her eyes never left the documents before her. "This is a board meeting, Myra. Not a stage for your theater."
"Oh, but everyone sees it." Myra leaned forward, chin resting on her hand, gaze darting between Mira and Arkellin. "You walk differently. You smile differently. Even your temper doesn't quite bite like it used to. Almost as if someone finally got past the armor."
A murmur rippled at the edges of the table—directors too cautious to openly react, but too human to resist the subtext.
Arkellin sat still, his presence unflinching, but his eyes caught the clash with quiet calculation.
Mira finally lifted her gaze. Steel clashed against velvet as she met her sister's smirk head-on. "If you think this company survives on gossip, then you don't belong at this table."
Myra only smiled wider, as if she'd won by drawing blood.
The tension radiated outward, thicker than the storm pressing against the glass. And in that pressure, the boardroom's crisis became more than numbers—it became a battlefield of blood and intimacy.
The boardroom had turned brittle, the kind of silence that could snap with a single word. Mira's pen was poised, Myra's smirk lingered like perfume, and the directors whispered like children hiding behind curtains.
Arkellin moved.
He rose from his chair with measured calm, the faint scrape of wood against marble pulling every eye toward him. Without hurry, he reached into the inner pocket of his suit and withdrew a slim, matte-black drive—the shard of Kindrake's inheritance.
The air shifted.
He laid it on the table with a quiet click, then slid a thin folder beside it. The sound, small as it was, cracked through the tension like a gunshot.
"This," Arkellin said, voice low but carrying, "is not incompetence. It's sabotage."
Murmurs erupted, chairs creaking, directors bristling with the sudden sting of accusation. One older man banged his palm against the table. "Impossible. We have protocols—"
Arkellin cut him off without raising his tone. "Protocols were bypassed. Not by force. By access." He flicked the drive toward the central console. "I traced the breach before your servers went dark. The system didn't collapse from outside pressure. Someone inside opened the door."
A technician rushed to connect the drive. At once, Arkellin's custom interface bloomed across the glass wall—clean blue lines overlaid on red chaos. Data logs, cross-referenced timestamps, digital signatures stacked in precision.
The directors leaned forward, their reflections caught in the glowing glass.
Arkellin's gaze swept the room, calm, surgical. "Every approval has a fingerprint. And these fingerprints repeat, over and over, embedded in authorizations that should not exist." He tapped the folder, sliding it across. "They're not mistakes. They're deliberate. Someone here made them."
The directors' whispers rose into frantic tones.
Mira sat straighter, her eyes sharp, locking on the data. The pieces fit too cleanly to deny. Myra leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs slowly, watching the tension build with a glint of amusement.
Arkellin didn't waver. He planted both hands on the table and leaned forward, his voice cutting through the noise with razor precision.
"The traitor isn't in the shadows. He's in this room. Sitting at this table."
The weight of his words slammed into the air, silencing even the rustle of papers. The storm outside pressed harder against the glass, lightning crawling faint across the skyline.
And for the first time that morning, every director stopped breathing—waiting for the blade to fall.
The silence in the boardroom hung like a blade suspended above every head. The storm outside rumbled low, thunder pressing faint against the glass.
Arkellin stood unmoving, the glow of the data wall casting his sharp profile in cold light. His eyes swept the table once, then fixed on the folder before him.
He flipped it open. The final page slid across the obsidian surface, stopping squarely in front of the directors. A single name glared back in black print.
Director Voss.
The room fractured.
One director gasped, another cursed under his breath. A woman clutched her necklace, shaking her head in disbelief. "No… not him."
Mira's pen snapped between her fingers, ink staining her palm. Myra leaned forward with a low, delighted laugh. "Oh, this just got interesting."
Voss, grey-haired, always the quiet stabilizer at meetings, sat frozen for a beat too long. Then he scoffed, shoving back his chair with a screech. "Lies. Fabrications! He rigs his own systems and points them at me?"
Arkellin didn't move. His voice was ice. "The data doesn't lie. You left your mark in every transfer. Every leak."
Voss's eyes darted—toward the doors, toward the emergency exit at the far wall. Sweat broke on his brow.
"Enough of this," he snapped. "You think you can walk in here and rewrite the company? I'll—"
He lunged for the exit.
Chaos erupted. Several directors shouted, some rising in panic. Mira half-stood, frozen between instinct and protocol. Myra simply smiled, as though watching theater unfold.
But Arkellin was already moving.
He slid from his chair with predatory speed, cutting the distance in three strides. His hand caught Voss's arm before he reached the door, twisting it back with brutal precision. Voss cried out, struggling, his other hand clawing for the door handle. Arkellin slammed him against the glass wall instead, the impact shuddering the entire frame.
"Fight all you want," Arkellin said, voice low in Voss's ear. "It changes nothing."
The directors stood rooted, stunned, as security finally burst through the main doors, guns half-raised in confusion. Arkellin shoved Voss toward them, his movements controlled, almost disdainful.
"Take him," he ordered. "To the police. To the regulators. To whoever will tear him open the fastest."
The guards seized Voss, snapping restraints around his wrists. He spat curses, eyes wild, but there was fear under the fury.
Just before they dragged him out, Voss caught Arkellin's gaze and let a smile crack across his battered face.
"You're sharper than I expected, Andy," he hissed. "But sharp blades break the fastest."
The doors slammed shut behind him.
The boardroom sat in stunned quiet. Mira's knuckles whitened around her notes, breath shallow. Myra swirled her pen idly, lips curved, eyes sparkling. The storm outside flared with a sheet of lightning, throwing their reflections across the glass.
Arkellin straightened his suit jacket, calm once more. But in his eyes lingered something colder: the knowledge that Voss was only a piece of a larger machine.
Because beneath the panic, beneath the scandal, one truth remained clear—Voss was just a pawn.
And the Council was already moving their next piece.