Chapter 36: A Ring, A Seal, A Loss.

Chapter 36: A Ring, A Seal, A Loss.

He laughed.

Not the polite laugh of someone managing a tense situation, not the performative laugh of someone buying time. A genuine laugh — short, sharp, the sound of a man who had just climbed through a drainage channel on his elbows, navigated three days of Vel-Thak patrol coverage, and unlocked a vault that several years of effort had failed to open, and was now being asked to hand over the result by the person who had been waiting with entry tools when he arrived.

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