The Ministry of Whispers did not sleep, and neither did its Director.
Lyss Myrvalis sat alone in the highest office of the obsidian spire, surrounded by towering stacks of logistical reports, demographic audits, and raw intelligence dispatches. Her scales, once a vibrant, gleaming crimson, had dulled to an exhausted, bruised purple. Her eyes were deeply sunken, bracketed by the permanent shadows of chronic insomnia.
She had not slept for more than three consecutive hours since the intelligence war of Arc 10. The trauma of Vaelthorn's invisible sleeper agents had broken a fundamental piece of her psyche. She no longer viewed the world as a complex geopolitical ecosystem; she viewed it as a sterile, binary equation. There was the Sovereign's absolute perfection, and there was the rot trying to consume it.
Her tail flicked rhythmically against the stone floor. Thump. Thump. Thump.
