The body does not negotiate with power.
It does not care about headlines, about markets, about narratives, about resilience.
It stops when it must.
And when it stops, everything else follows.
The day had been long.
Not unusually dramatic.
Not catastrophic.
Just relentless.
Back-to-back meetings.
An international delegation debrief.
Parliamentary fiscal review.
Two internal resilience audits.
A late-evening virtual summit with cross-border infrastructure analysts.
Mira had eaten once.
Drank too much coffee.
Ignored the dull ache behind her eyes.
By 10:47 p.m., she was still standing in the Commission chamber, reviewing a late amendment to adaptive threshold legislation.
Daniel had already left.
The staff had thinned.
The building hummed softly in the way large institutions do at night.
She leaned forward over the circular table.
The words on the screen blurred slightly.
She blinked.
It didn't help.
A wave of dizziness hit her, not sharp, not dramatic.
