His voice was barely above a whisper, but the words echoed.
"The palace…" he murmured. "Right there. Just thirty light years gone in a single step."
The realization weighed on him—not with dread, but exhilaration.
After all the fighting… the mines, the forging, the supply chains, the warzones, the killing. Now, a door. To the very center of it all.
To the heart of the Feline Empire.
To The Demon Cat Empress.
Mark let the silence hold for another breath before turning away. "We're not going yet," he muttered. "Let's be patient for now. As long as I can get that army into this place, we can strike her Empire straight in the heart."
*
Just like that, two weeks passed in the blink of an eye.
The atmosphere on the unnamed planet had shifted.
Where once it was full of tension and urgency, now it sat in anxious stillness.
