Royal Palace - Algoria Capital, Night of Infiltration
The servant's entrance had worked exactly as planned—forged documentation passing morning inspection without scrutiny, Amari and three others hidden among legitimate cargo, establishing position inside palace walls while appearing as workers delivering supplies to kitchen storage. They'd spent the day moving with careful anonymity through servant corridors, mapping interior layout, confirming intelligence against actual architecture, identifying patrol patterns that reconnaissance hadn't revealed.
Now, at midnight, Amari moved alone through darkened hallways while his team maintained positions near extraction points. Elena's sound suppression extended maybe eight meters—insufficient range for entire infiltration but adequate for critical moments when silence meant survival. Dmitri's shadow manipulation worked better in darkness than lamplight, and palace hallways offered both depending on location.
