The Iron Dominion's government halls were never quiet. The air was thick with the hiss of steam pipes, the scratching of pens, and the endless shuffle of boots across stone floors.
Messengers hurried in and out, noble envoys barked orders, and clerks bent their heads over endless stacks of parchment.
Among them sat Elara Duskveil.
She looked like any other clerk plain ink-stained fingers, a simple gray dress, hair pinned back without flair.
No one paused to notice her. No one ever did. She was the kind of person the eye slipped past, a shadow among the noise.
That suited her perfectly.
At her desk, she copied figures from one ledger to another with careful precision: shipments of coal, quotas of factory steel, names of workers. Mundane, lifeless work. To anyone glancing over her shoulder, it was nothing but dull bureaucracy.
A clerk passing by smirked. "Still at the ledgers, Duskveil? Careful, you'll turn to dust before they ever promote you."
Elara only smiled faintly, dipping her quill again.
She did not tell him she already knew the mistress he visited on Thursdays, or how much debt he owed to a pawnbroker by the docks.
Her eyes flicked, sharp and quick, tracing connections between numbers, spotting irregularities others ignored. A factory receiving more shipments than it reported. A noble's name appearing in two conflicting accounts. A missing signature.
She never corrected these errors. She memorized them.
From time to time, her gaze lifted. She watched as a nobleman in fine blue velvet stormed past, complaining loudly to an aide about investments gone sour. She marked his name in her mind. She listened to the clerks beside her whisper about delayed pay at the docks. She filed that away, too.
No one noticed how still she sat, how her ears seemed to drink in every careless word, how her quill scratched in perfect rhythm even when her mind was elsewhere.
To them, Elara was invisible.
To Elara, they were all pieces on a board they did not know existed.
When the bells rang to mark the end of the workday, she closed her ledger neatly, stacked it with the others, and walked out with the crowd. She left no impression behind, no voice raised, no trace of presence.
But under her calm mask, she thought only of the man in velvet. His name. His factory. His weakness.
Already, the game had begun.