OPERATION WINTERSPINE (Strings Between Us Book 2)

CHAPTER SEVEN: OF THE HEART, THE SIGIL, AND THE CROWN

CHAPTER SEVEN: OF THE HEART, THE SIGIL, AND THE CROWN

XYTHE'S POV

Eclipsa Sanctum, First Floor – Ardent Court War Room

The Sigil Heart Hall | 10:00 PM

You can always tell when a room is about to start a war. It's in the silence before the first name is spoken. In the way the light flickers against the steel rim of the table. In the glint of a blade that hasn't been drawn—yet. That's what the Sigil Heart Hall felt like tonight. A breath before everything changes.

The centerpiece glows: a 360° Tactical Holo-Table, casting cold blue light over each of us. Multi-layered overlays pulse above it—Supreme Allievo schematics, Celestine perimeter lines, full city-grid exfiltration routes. Threads of real-time drone footage flicker like veins. Pulse biometrics swim in its depths.

Around it, our circle. The Crown's Round. Nine seats. One kingdom. Each seat bonded to its operator. Each interface adapted to our weapons, field roles, and pulse frequency. The nine of us were seated around the obsidian conference arc, where no one ever sat comfortably—by design.

Everything in Eclipsa Sanctum was crafted for one purpose: control the atmosphere, and you control the Court. No windows. No clocks. No distractions. Only strategy.

Lyle's voice cuts clean through the hum. "Operation Winterspine: Act One. Initiates." No drama. No theatrics. Just reality. That's how you start a war.

The center of the table ripples. Crimson profiles bloom into view—fifteen in total. Fifteen faces outlined in security hexes. A Council that claims order but bleeds secrets.

The High Chamber. Fifteen seats. Fifteen masks. One illusion of order. But behind that curtain? Misused power. Secret fund diversions. Black-market alliances. Ghosts of the Halcyon Pact stirring awake.

"Focus—High Chamber Council," I said evenly, voice cutting through the dim.

"The hidden ones behind the Halcyon web. We isolate, investigate, then cut." It sounds clean. Surgical. But no war ever is. In my head, I'm already skipping five moves ahead. Outcomes form, collapse, reform.

What happens if we miscalculate? If we expose too early? If Khaizer Dylan becomes collateral?

If he burns, the Court burns with him. And I'm the one holding the match.

Lyle didn't bother looking up from his tablet. He already knew what I'd built. "Xythe," he said simply, "behavioral breakdown."

Always me. I don't check the file. I don't need to. I carry every piece of their corruption in my head like a chessboard I never asked to play.

"Lucian Ortega—Vice Head of Internal Operations," I began. "Redirected ₱3.2 million of campus funds in five undocumented movements over the last two months. All tagged as festival or emergency allocations. None reflected in actual ground logistics."

Ari tilted her head slightly. "Where'd it go?"

Of course she asks. Always sharp. Always precise. Always saying the thing I'm already thinking, just gentler.

"Disappeared," I said. "Three days after KD's suspension. Timing's too precise. The funds aren't missing—they were sold. Probably to clean up a mistake."

"A body?" Saichel offered cheerfully, already spinning a silver pen between his fingers.

"Or a witness."

I slide the next map into the air. A new layer of ghost-pings, call anomalies, and blackout hours across the internal comm net.

"Ortega meets regularly with Larraine Zobel, Damien Reyes, and Althea Morales," I continued. "I backtraced their patterns. Those three are never logged on official Council rosters when Ortega reroutes his comms. They vanish. Every time."