The silence after the encrypted call did not break easily. The restored Helios deal should have marked relief. Ashford had stepped back from the brink of collapse; the market had stabilised; and the alternative Maris channel had transformed certain failures into a strategic recovery. Yet none of that remained at the centre of the room now.
Only Seraphina's final words did.
The first timeline.
Lucien stood facing her in the glass strategy room, the city lights reflecting across the dark windows behind them. The exhaustion of the last twenty-four hours remained visible in his posture, but something deeper had replaced the sharp frustration that had driven him through the crisis.
Now there was focus, and something far more personal.
"What timeline?" he asked again, his voice quieter this time.
Seraphina did not answer immediately. She looked at the blank wall screen where the call had ended, as if the dead line itself had reopened wounds she had spent months burying.
