Dawn arrived like a blade slid under a sleeping throat — precise, inevitable, and bright with the danger of what it would reveal. The palace had become a hive of urgent footsteps: riders spurring for the river, messengers with faces like folded paper, and soldiers fastening armour as if it were a second skin. The ledger's shadow stalked every corridor; the Ghazi fleet pressed in at Veer Chauhan's western flank; the choice had been made to split the response — sail and shadow, and a campaign inside the realm to blunt the ledger's poison.