The reassignment order arrived while Ren was asleep.
The timing made the card uglier than the words.
Daylight would have forced explanation. Witnesses. Medical objections. Veylan's paperwork violence. Seraphina's calm, terrifying questions. Midnight offered a softer kind of cruelty. Sleeping targets were easier to classify as recovered, compliant, unavailable, already moved.
Administrative harm loved hours when decent people were tired.
Cowards preferred sleeping targets.
A white administrative card slid under the Healing Hall recovery room door at second bell after midnight. Elara's root near the threshold caught it before the card crossed fully into the room. The root blackened at the tip, then snapped the card upward like an offended snake.
Nyx caught it.
No one had seen her enter.
No one cared anymore.
She read the card.
Then looked at me.
That was enough to wake everyone important.
