Seraphina Vance sat in her private office, a space seven floors above the President's public workspace—a sanctuary where the real machinery of power operated, far removed from prying eyes, recording devices, and the sanitized theater of government. The room was austere, almost monastic in its design. White walls. Dark wood furniture. A single window overlooking the sprawling circuit board of New Vein City below. Everything was deliberate. Everything was controlled.
The holographic display before her desk shimmered with three separate feeds, each one a window into a different facet of the puzzle that had consumed her thoughts for the better part of the afternoon.
Left: Satori Nakano's official Academy file, a sterile collection of data points and sanitized facts.
Center: Surveillance footage from the Crucible duel, looping endlessly—his movements, his power, his victory.
