The palace no longer slept.
Lights burned at all hours now, casting long reflections across polished stone corridors where guards moved in overlapping patrol patterns. Every entrance had been reclassified, every servant vetted twice, and every data node brought under Cocytus oversight. The attempted assassination had not only wounded Duke Archimedes' body, but stripped the capital of its remaining illusions.
Tobias stood at the center of the command chamber, hands clasped behind his back as he watched the flow of information assemble itself around him. Reports arrived in layered streams—troop movements, sensor pings, intercepted transmissions—each thread feeding into the Warmind he held just beneath the surface of his thoughts. He did not yet fully unleash it, but he could feel the soldiers responding regardless, their morale stabilizing as certainty replaced fear.
"They'll try again," Tobias said quietly, breaking the low murmur of discussion. "Not immediately. House Mordred will wait for us to grow confident, then exploit whatever pattern they think we've settled into."
Trace nodded, arms folded as he studied the rotating projection of the capital and its surrounding districts. "They'll shift methods," he agreed. "Less spectacle, more attrition. Sabotage, misinformation, maybe even staged civilian unrest if they've seeded enough operatives."
Kvasir adjusted the display with a practiced flick, replacing city overlays with economic flow charts and personnel hierarchies. "And if they're particularly clever," he added smoothly, "they'll attempt to make us appear responsible for our own instability. A well-timed data leak, a falsified order, a manufactured atrocity. House Mordred excels at crimes that look like accidents."
Tobias exhaled slowly, then turned to face them fully. "Then we don't play defense. We hunt."
The first phase of counter-infiltration began before dawn. Hetairoi units deployed not as garrisons, but as rapid-response anchors, each mech paired with sensor drones and infantry specialists trained in urban containment. Cassian Rook coordinated the deployments personally, his voice calm and precise as he adapted routes and patrols in real time. Where other pilots relied on raw aggression, Cassian demonstrated an instinctive understanding of momentum, using terrain and timing to deny enemy movement rather than chase it.
Beneath the city, that carelessness began to surface. A false maintenance request triggered an automated audit, which in turn revealed a data echo where none should exist. A hidden transmitter was discovered embedded inside an abandoned pressure valve, its encryption archaic but effective. Kvasir dismantled it personally, tracing its signal backward through layers of dead relays until it terminated at a sealed hab-complex scheduled for demolition.
"That's our nest," Trace said grimly.
The strike was surgical. Two Hoplites sealed the surrounding access routes while infantry advanced through maintenance shafts under Tobias' direct guidance. The Warmind expanded then, threading their minds together into a single coherent intent. Fear dulled, confusion vanished, and every movement aligned with purpose. Tobias felt the strain immediately, a dull ache behind his temples, but he did not relent. The firefight was brief and vicious.
Mordred operatives fought with the ferocity of those who knew capture meant disgrace or death, but they were outmatched. One by one, they were subdued or killed, their resistance collapsing as Tobias' foresight guided his forces away from ambush points before they were triggered. When the smoke cleared, three prisoners remained alive, bound and sedated. Among the recovered data was something far more troubling.
"These aren't just assassins," Kvasir said slowly, his usual composure strained as he reviewed the decrypted files. "They were mapping Dust transport routes, refinery redundancies, and—" he paused, then looked up at Tobias. "—your movements, my lord. Specifically yours."
Silence settled over the chamber. Trace broke it first. "Then it's not just No'aar anymore," he said. "This is about succession."
Tobias turned back to the hololith, where the oceans of No'aar churned endlessly beneath artificial light. In his mind, futures branched and collapsed, some burning bright, others ending in ruin. He did not voice them, but he felt their weight.
"House Mordred made their move," he said at last. "Now they've revealed their hand."
Outside, WarMechs continued their patrols, engines humming like watchful giants as the city adjusted to its new reality. The shadows had been pushed back, but they had not vanished. They never did. And Tobias Hawthorne understood, with a clarity that bordered on prophecy, that this was no longer merely a battle for a planet. It was the opening movement of a far greater war.