The transition from sleep to wakefulness had always been a sharp, highly tactical process for the Warlord of Oakhaven. For ten brutal years, Valeria had trained her body to instantly snap into complete awareness at the slightest shift in the shadows or the faintest metallic scrape of a drawn blade.
But this morning was entirely different.
Valeria did not snap awake. She drifted slowly upward through a deep, profoundly restorative sea of absolute exhaustion. As she opened her glowing amethyst eyes, her deeply ingrained combat instincts braced for the glaring, aggressive intrusion of a digital interface. She expected to see the cold, calculating emerald logic of her Chief Librarian permissions or the terrifying, jagged red warnings of the cosmic Audit Program.
She saw absolutely nothing but the morning.
