The Ministry of Whispers had abandoned the eastern relay station twenty years ago.
It sat on the freezing, jagged outskirts of Ashenveil, a decaying spire of iron and brass slowly being swallowed by the aggressive mountain moss. When the aetheric transmission grids were upgraded, the Ministry left the old mechanical telegraph hardware to rust, assuming the sheer physical isolation of the spire was security enough.
They were wrong.
Sera Myrvalis stood in the cramped, freezing control room at the top of the spire, her breath pluming in the frigid air. At thirty, she still wore the unassuming gray robes of an archivist, but the soft, deferential curves of her youth had hardened into a permanent, chilling stillness.
