Tyrant Queen of Darkness
"Hard choices require hard minds."
Tags - Raef Malstadt
The room was not one of the usual sort.
This was not a command center. Not a war table. Not even a formal meeting chamber. It had no windows, no dataport access, and no surveillance feeds open to the network beyond the chamber walls. The guards outside were members of Serina's personal retinue—silent, unmarked, uncurious. The air inside was dry. Controlled. Deceptively quiet.
The chamber was oval in shape, cut into the ancient rock of Polis Massa's deeper strata where echoes could not reach. Only two chairs occupied the space, both dark and severe—military in shape, but adorned with the kind of geometric design that suggested artistry, not comfort. Between them was a single table, bearing only a silver carafe of water and two untouched glasses.
Serina Calis sat alone, as she had for the past eleven minutes.
Not waiting.
Settling.
She did not fidget. She did not pace. One leg crossed over the other, hands folded across her lap with the languid ease of a woman who knew exactly how long things took to fall into place. Her gaze was fixed not on the door but slightly off-center, where a single line of dark stone bisected the floor beneath them.
The room had no clock. Time belonged to her here.
Her hair was coiled into a severe crown-knot at the back of her head, revealing the stark angles of her jaw and the deliberate elegance of her high-necked slate tunic. No rank insignia adorned it. No medals. No personal sigils. Serina had reached a point where identity was no longer something she wore.
She was the meaning behind the uniform. That was enough.
A single document lay open on the table beside her—a physical page, printed on high-density synthpaper. It bore Raef Malstadt's name at the top, along with his mission signature and a security clearance marker burned into the header in ultraviolet ink.
Below it: a short report.
The official account of the Orax operation was crisp. Clean. Sanitized.
Crystal deposits secured.
Mine workers eliminated.
Command chain dissolved.
Structure rendered non-operational and sealed per protocol.
Raef Malstadt: Wounded. Recovered. Ready for redeployment.
But that was not the real report.
The real report wasn't written. Couldn't be.
It lived in what was not said. In what Selik hadn't described. In the two lines of redacted visual logs. In the corrupted data nodes from Raef's armor feed. In the exact moment—marked to the second—when every comm relay near the reactor core had gone dead, only to reconnect precisely forty-one seconds before extraction.
Serina hadn't asked what happened in those forty-one seconds.
Not yet.
She had, however, requested this room.
Not her office. Not a tactical suite. This room. Here, beneath the rest of Polis Massa. A place that spoke no truths aloud, but held them in its stone like a mausoleum.
Her fingers tapped the edge of Raef's file once—just once—and then fell still again. It wasn't impatience. It was a reminder. A metronome of focus.
When the door finally hissed open—slowly, softly—she did not turn.
Let him enter first. Let him see the setting. Let him understand the theater before the script was handed to him.
Let him feel it.