The silence was a lie.
Two months passed. Two months without a direct attack. No nodes. No whispers. The city exhaled. The fear, which had been a constant, suffocating presence, began to recede. People started to forget. They started to believe the war was over.
Kael saw the danger. "This is a trap," he warned, his voice a low growl in the quiet of the substation. "The Architect is not gone. It is watching. Learning. This peace… it is poison."
Arden stood before the city map. It was clear. No heat signatures of fear. No psychic resonance. Only the steady, rhythmic pulse of a city returning to normalcy. But she felt it too. The unnerving stillness. The calm before a storm of unimaginable fury.
"Peace makes people soft," she stated, her voice cold and hard as the steel of her resonance blade. "It makes them forget the teeth of the wolf at the door. The Architect is not attacking the city. It is attacking our vigilance."
