Chapter 3: Kael's First Assignment in the Shadow Cabinet

The meeting room had no windows.

Kael noticed this the way he noticed structural details in unfamiliar territory — automatically, catalogued without comment — as Darian's personal security detail closed the door behind them and took up positions outside it. The room occupied a sub-level of the Chancellery's private residential wing, accessible through a corridor that did not appear on any schematic he had been given during his Aegis orientation briefings. It was not a large room. It was not furnished to imply hospitality. A long table of dark composite stone, six chairs, recessed lighting calibrated to the color temperature of neither day nor night but something precisely between them — functional and ageless, the light of a space designed to make whatever happened inside it feel inevitable.

"Sit wherever you like," Darian said, and took the chair at the head of the table.