The marble floors of the palace corridor echoed faintly under Queen Inggrid Anneliese's hurried steps. She shoved open the door to Felix's study without knocking, only to be greeted by silence and the lingering scent of expensive cigars. The room was deserted, no trace of life, no hint that its owner ever returned just to sit here.
"Where the hell did that bastard run off to…" she muttered, striding toward the massive oak desk in the center. Her sharp eyes scanned the piles of documents. With hands trembling from burning curiosity, she tugged open the unlocked drawers. Beneath dull stacks of logistics reports, her fingers brushed against parchment, rough, musty, the kind of paper used in military field notes.
Heart pounding, she pulled it free. A topographic map of the southeastern border, marked with jagged red lines tracing hidden smuggler trails into Vesperia. In the corner, a small stamp of a carrion bird, the insignia of Zylos's high-level intelligence corps.
