Timeline: TC1853.11.15 (Late Morning)
Location: Seven Peaks — Command Center
The silence in the command center had weight.
Not the empty kind — the compressed kind. The silence of twelve people sitting in a room with privacy formations humming at the walls, waiting for something they already knew they didn't want to hear.
Raven stood at the head of the long table. She hadn't sat. Couldn't, really. Something about the chair felt too comfortable for what she was about to say, and her ribs were making their position on sudden movements very clear. She'd changed clothes — clean training robes, dark, practical — but the bruises still showed at her collar and wrists. The raw energy channels were visible to anyone with cultivation sight, hairline fractures in her spiritual pathways that would take days to fully mend.
