Downfall -

Today, it was lukewarm.

The defense grid, he then discovered, had been quietly decommissioning its outer sentry stations for twenty years. The reasoning was sound on paper: no external enemy had threatened Solaria for centuries. The real reason, buried in a private message cache he had to crack with his own emergency override, was that the sentries’ maintenance costs were being funneled into the construction of a new pleasure barge for the Admiralty. Downfall

The news arrived like a stone dropped into a still pond. Valerius dismissed the court. He walked the length of his empty throne room, his boots clicking on the polished obsidian floor. He passed the Throne of Screens, where a thousand holographic displays showed him the state of his empire: trade routes, fleet positions, public sentiment indices. Everything was green. Everything was stable. Today, it was lukewarm

A lie, he realized. Because if everything was stable, why had no one told him about Caelus? The real reason, buried in a private message

The Grand Chamberlain, a man whose spine was made of silk and ambition, bowed. “Your Radiance, the cupbearer was… replaced this morning. He failed to appear. We have a substitute.”