The morning after the court's reckoning arrived without celebration. There were no bells, no proclamations shouted from balconies, no banners unfurled in triumph. Instead, the palace woke to a quiet so complete it felt deliberate, as if the empire itself were holding its breath. Servants moved softly. Courtiers spoke in murmurs. Even the fountains in the inner gardens seemed subdued, their waters whispering rather than singing.
Celestia welcomed the silence.
She sat alone in the solar, sunlight filtering through gauze curtains and painting pale gold across the floor. Reports lay stacked on the table before her—confiscated estates, frozen accounts, houses stripped of their ancestral privileges. Each document represented centuries of influence dismantled in a single evening.
Yet she did not smile.
Victory was never the end of a struggle. It was merely the moment when one set of dangers revealed the next.
