CHAPTER 127 — THE FIRST TRUE BACKLASH
The backlash did not come from the outside.
That was what surprised them.
For days after Elena stepped fully out of the center, analysts watched borders, markets, and rival blocs, waiting for pressure to arrive from the usual directions. External threats were easy to predict. They followed patterns. They respected history.
What no one prepared for was the violence of internal reckoning.
Elena felt it the moment she woke.
Not fear. Not urgency.
Resistance.
It was in the way reports stacked faster than usual, not with emergencies, but with contradictions. Decisions overturned by other decisions. Directives quietly ignored. Authority challenged not with rebellion, but with reinterpretation.
This was not chaos.
This was power testing itself.
She sat at the edge of the bed longer than usual, hands resting loosely in her lap, eyes unfocused. The system had learned to move without her. Now it was learning something far more dangerous.
