To a mortal, five years was a substantial segment of a lifetime—a period long enough to heal a wound, rebuild a shattered home, or raise a child.
To Zephyr, five years was merely a unit of measurement. It was a block of time required to verify the stability of a data set.
Floating in the dead center of the Eternal Forge, surrounded by the swirling, high-density crimson and gold aether of the Imperial grid, the Iron Sovereign analyzed the five-year economic fallout of Sector Seven.
The physical destruction of the primary Faith Point condenser five years ago had not angered him. Zephyr had long since abandoned the biological response to territorial violation, having replaced it with a cold, absolute calculus that recognized only variables he had temporarily failed to account for.
