palace, though it brought no real silence with it. The quality of sound had simply changed—footsteps in corridors no longer echoed the same way, voices lowered themselves before reaching doorways, and the distant movement of soldiers repositioning throughout the captured city created a constant low background awareness of occupation in progress.
Inside the chamber time continued moving differently than it did in the world beyond these walls. The urgency had passed, but the tension had not disappeared. It had simply changed shape, transforming from immediate crisis into something more sustained. What had been frantic action became careful waiting. What had been visible and dramatic damage became something quieter and more uncertain, hidden beneath bandages and stable vital signs that promised nothing about actual recovery.
