Kael Myrvalis redesigned his intelligence architecture in forty-eight hours.
He did it from the same windowless office in the Ministry of Whispers where he'd built the original Mirror Protocol — the same iron desk, the same locked filing cabinet, the same cinnaite lantern that cast amber-pink light across the papers that no one else in the Dominion was permitted to see. The only change was the stack of files on his desk, which had tripled.
Fourteen people. Four scholars, ten support staff. Four research agendas, submitted quarterly. One Korthane scholar — Thendris — with supervised access to the Mechanist facility.
The original Mirror Protocol had been designed for a single intelligence vector: Verissk. One observer, one channel, one stream of curated misdirection. Elegant. Clean. Effective for eighteen months until the Arbiter's analysts had identified the temporal discrepancy and chosen — chosen — not to act on it.
