SERAPHINA’S POV
As we walked out of OTS, the building behind us felt different.
The same glass façade caught the late afternoon light, the same steel framework held steady against the skyline, the same quiet hum of systems ran beneath it all—but something fundamental had shifted.
I didn’t stop walking until we reached the edge of the lot, the small group that had chosen to follow me trailing close behind.
I could feel them there without turning—the weight of their decision, the quiet gravity of it settling into place now that there was no going back.
It wasn’t a large group, but as I finally slowed and glanced back, I recognized most of the faces.
Not the peripheral members who came and went with projects, but the ones who had built things from the ground up, who had been here long before me.
The core members who understood how OTS functioned beneath the surface—the systems, the networks, the things that couldn’t simply be written down and handed over.
