Location:Seven Peaks — Raven's Office, Eastern Terrace
Date/Time:TC1856.04.28 (Morning to Night)
The message arrived through Thorne's channels on the twenty-eighth.
Raven read it in her office. Alone.
Serian's effects released from archive. Journal confirms Serian and Amara — Room 621, Grand Imperial Hotel, TC1853.01.06. Same night. Two doors from the trap.
Tianlei is Serian's biological son.
He is my son. That hasn't changed.
She set the message down. Read it again. The words didn't change. The arithmetic didn't change.
Room 621. Room 623. Same night. Same hotel. Same girl in two rooms, running two operations, using two cousins like instruments in an orchestra that only the System could hear.
Tianlei was Serian's son.
And then the thing she hadn't expected — the thing that had nothing to do with strategy or campaigns or doors — hit her so hard that the room tilted and her hands found the edge of the desk and held on.
***
Novara.
