The Emperor's summons arrived at noon.
I had been expecting it. I had been expecting it since the moment we left Lord Baek's garden, when the pale morning light had made everything feel briefly possible and I had allowed myself, for three or four consecutive hours, to believe that we might outpace the consequences. That we might have time. That the plan would unfold in the order we had designed it, cleanly and without interference.
We had not outpaced the consequences.
The summons was addressed to me personally. Not to Kaien. Not to us. To me — by name, by full title, with the particular formal precision that indicated someone had spent considerable time on the wording and wanted me to feel the weight of every character. The messenger delivered it without expression. The seal was the Emperor's personal one, not the court's official stamp. That distinction mattered. It meant this was not official business.
This was personal.
