Jian woke slowly.
It happened in pieces, the way it always did when his body was finally allowed to rest.
First came the awareness of warmth—heavy blankets pulled up to his shoulders, the soft weight of them pressing him down into the mattress.
Then the pillow, half crushed beneath his face, smelling faintly of something clean and floral.
The room around him was quiet in a way that felt almost unnatural, no hum of engines, no distant clatter of a ship's hull settling, no wind rattling through broken panels.
Just stillness.
For a few long seconds, Jian didn't move at all. His mind drifted somewhere soft and formless between sleep and waking, unwilling to surface. The strange pale light of Gia filtered through the enormous windows and spilled across the floor in long silver bands, and somewhere far off he could hear the faint, muffled rhythm of the palace beginning its day.
It was nice.
It was too nice.
