Ten days passed.
To anyone watching from the eastern horizon, the Kingdom of Suryax appeared to be doing what every kingdom in the warfare event was doing — recovering, drilling, maintaining patrols, and not much else. The Mega Dreadships sat in their outer harbor in apparent idle. The Skydread Crafts ran observable patrol arcs along predictable routes. The dome pulsed at standard idle frequency. Soldiers were seen running drills in the outer courtyards using formations that observers could identify as carryovers from the kingdom's pre-awakening doctrine.
This was all theater.
Operation Illusion had been Silvester's proposal on the morning after the Celestara-Dravokh battle, and the leadership had adopted it within an hour. The premise was simple: every enemy observer expected the Suryax-Ananta Alliance to be building. Therefore, the alliance would let them see building — but only the building it was prepared to expose. The genuine work happened beneath that visible layer.
