The primary intelligence nexus of the Ministry of Whispers was utterly silent, save for the frantic scratching of hundreds of cinnaite quills.
It had been a full year since Zephyr had enacted the Mandate of Absolute Devotion. It had been a full year since the four hundred towns on the western frontier had collapsed. And it had been a full year since Lyss Myrvalis had murdered her own Deputy Director in a soundproof, adamantine cube.
Lyss sat alone in her heavily warded Director's vault, staring at the intelligence reports spread across her iron-wood desk.
She picked up a heavy, wax-sealed parchment detailing the aftermath of the Tremor Cult's sabotage of the primary aqueduct (Ch 429). The Cult had successfully detonated the structural supports. The Hydra's terrifying, impossible intervention had caught the falling masonry and saved the capital's water supply, but the cult's operational capacity remained the Ministry's absolute highest priority.
