While the Grand Ordinator wept in the high alcoves of the Basilica, and while the Sovereign of the Imperium coldly executed the erasure of four million lives in the Exosphere, Sera Myrvalis walked quietly through the deepest, coldest subterranean level of the Black Cells.
She did not wear Ghost armor. She wore the unadorned gray robes of an archivist. She carried no weapons, and she operated entirely off the books, having bypassed the Inquisition's security checkpoints through her own Alpha-Prime network.
The air in the secure medical ward smelled of harsh antiseptic and old, damp stone.
Sera stopped outside Cell 4, staring through the thick pane of reinforced aether-glass.
Inside the stark, white room, Lyss Myrvalis lay on a narrow cot. The architect of the Imperium's intelligence apparatus—the woman who had hunted Korthane sleeper agents across continents for a decade—was now nothing more than a frail, withered husk.
