Date: TC1853.08.25
Location: Imperial City - Seer Tower (Amara's Chambers)
The smell of jasmine tea had become the geography of Amara's mornings.
Same blend, same porcelain cup, same tray delivered through the door that opened only from the outside. She'd counted the pattern on the saucer—fourteen petals around a gilded rim—so many times the number had lost all meaning. Fourteen. Like the weeks since the broadcast. Like the guards who rotated through shifts, she could predict to the minute.
Routine was a cage dressed in silk.
