The night after the attack did not sleep.
It breathed.
It stalked.
It coiled itself around the estate like a living, watching thing, waiting for its next move, waiting for Dante's. Aria felt it with every shift of wind against the windowpanes and every echo of boots on marble tiles. The atmosphere inside Dante's fortress had changed. It was no longer simply his home.
It was a battlefield dressing itself for war.
Aria stood in the doorway of Dante's private armory, the same one from the night before, but it felt different now. More dangerous. More real. The metallic scent of cold steel clung to the air. Rows of weapons lined the walls. Monitors glowed with maps, alerts, surveillance feeds, his world humming like a living engine of violence and strategy.
Dante was at the center of it all, solid and immovable, like the axis of a storm.
