Chapter 226: The Weight of Three Days

At the same time—while Sophia stood before the ancient altar and Eldric traced dust over forgotten runes, while Tobias slipped through the noise and dim lanterns of the black market—Orion remained in the eastern wing of the compound, inside the room where the weather banners stirred against the draft.

Paula’s department always smelled faintly of ozone, like air just before thunder. The blue-feathered ornaments hanging from the rafters clicked lightly with every tremor of wind that came through the shutters.

On the table before her, the map of Nirvana was unrolled—a terrain sheet covered with narrow valleys, faint ink lines, and circles drawn in charcoal that marked places where the pressure had dropped.

Paula stood over it, her braid tucked behind one shoulder, eyes sharp beneath the dim glow of a suspended lamp. Around her, three of her weather-readers hovered, whispering calculations, their fingers gliding over polished glass rods that shimmered with faint streaks of light.

Orion crossed his arms and looked from the map to her face. "You said there’s a storm coming," he said, steady. "When exactly will it happen?" 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

Paula inhaled slowly, as if preparing herself to repeat a truth she had already weighed a dozen times. "Within the week," she said. Her voice was calm, but the corners of her mouth tightened.

Orion frowned. "Within the week? That’s a long stretch to keep people half-prepared and half-uneasy. I need more than that, Paula."

Her assistants exchanged nervous glances.

Orion stepped closer to the table and tapped one finger against the corner of the map. "You know how the pack is. They can’t just lock themselves in their homes for an entire week waiting for something that might happen on the seventh day—or not at all. They have things to do, businesses to run. You can’t just keep everyone locked in for a full day. They will get antsy, you know that."

He looked at her, his tone firm. "There’s a reason you’re in charge of this department. I trust you and your team to narrow it down. Give me a timeframe I can work with."

Paula’s throat moved as she swallowed. She glanced at her colleagues, then back at Orion. "You see, the reason I said within the week is because we don’t want to give you a false estimate. The readings have been unstable. Every few hours, the wind markers shift. If we rush, we’ll be wrong."

Orion straightened. "Then work faster and be right."

It wasn’t a command shouted in anger, but the way he said it left no room for hesitation.

Paula released a breath, the kind that carried both respect and resignation. "Very well." She motioned for her team. "We’ll try to pin it down."

Her assistants moved quickly. One fetched a thin, circular glass disc etched with runes; another unrolled a narrow scroll filled with weather runes and lunar diagrams; the third pulled a cord hanging from the ceiling, lowering a crystal sphere that shimmered with faint mist. The room brightened with reflected light as their tools came alive, pulsing faintly in rhythm with the air.

Paula spoke in a low voice as she and her people began to work. "Pressure has been dropping in the north-western sector since dawn. The temperature’s holding steady near the peaks, which means the front isn’t frozen—so not a blizzard. But the humidity marks..."

She gestured to the flickering lines on the disc. "They’re climbing too fast."

The others murmured, noting values, adjusting levers on the side of the crystal sphere. The surface mist inside began to swirl faster, shifting color from clear to pale gray.

Orion stood silent, watching. His eyes tracked their movements without full comprehension; their language—of currents, markers, barometric shifts—wasn’t his world. But he could feel the weight of it, the quiet urgency in how they moved.

Paula leaned over the map, muttering, "If the air keeps tightening around the eastern ridges, the pressure line will fold here..." She marked the area with chalk. "That gives us... within a week, but maybe five days?"

"It could be lesser." One person spoke out.

Her assistant, a young woman with two rings of copper around her fingers, added quickly, "And if the pressure collapses inward, it’ll drag the lowlands into convergence."

Orion arched a brow. "So what you’re saying is the storm’s forming above us already."

Paula nodded faintly. "Above us, yes—but still far enough that it needs time to gather."

He waited, his patience measured but visibly thinning. "Then what’s the estimate?"

Paula didn’t answer immediately. She turned toward her team. They spoke softly again, counting intervals, recalculating. A few minutes passed in quiet intensity, broken only by the faint hum of their instruments and the scratch of chalk. Orion could hear his own heartbeat in the stillness.

Finally, Paula’s expression changed—relief, understanding, and something grim behind it. She exhaled and straightened. Her assistants exchanged brief smiles of agreement.

"Well?" Orion asked.

Paula looked up at him. "Three days," she said.

He lifted an eyebrow. "Three days?"

"Yes," she said, firmer this time. "That’s our best estimate. Within three days, the storm will hit."

"Does that include today?"

Paula shook her head. "No. We start counting from tomorrow. It could happen on the first day, the second, or the third—but not today. But I recommend preparing from today. We can’t predict the exact hour it’ll begin, only that when it does, it won’t be a small one."

Orion’s jaw tightened. "How bad are we talking? A blizzard?"

"No," she said. "A rainstorm."

He blinked. "A rainstorm? Then why the grim faces?"

Paula gestured to the sphere. Inside, the mist had darkened into something almost black, swirling violently despite the stillness of the air around them. "Because it’s not just a storm, Orion. It’s going to be heavy, unbroken rain. The ground will soften, the rivers will rise, and we can expect floods. The last time the readings looked like this, parts of the southern wall collapsed."

"Yeah... which was why we reinforced the walls." Orion said with a nod.