Chapter 161

Chapter 161 SERAPHINA The council chamber emptied slowly, a tide of voices fading into polished marble corridors and echoing glass atriums. Screens dimmed, holographic projectors shut down, and the constant hum of governance analytics dulled to a background whisper. For hours Kaelos had stood like a living pillar at the center of it all—his words precise, his tone measured, his mind weaving through hundreds of simultaneous threads of global policy integration. I had felt his focus through our bond: steel, steady, relentless. But now, as silence settled, what bled through was the exhaustion. I crossed the chamber toward him. His hands were braced on the council’s central console, shoulders bowed ever so slightly. To anyone else, he still looked unbreakable—commander of a future where enhanced and conventional communities worked side by side. But to me, Kaelos’s weariness was like heat radiating off stone. “You carried them through another storm,” I murmured, laying my hand against his b