The Minister of Rites set a steady pace, and Orion fell in beside Asteria, matching their stride while trying not to look like a tourist, craning his neck at everything.

  The first corridor took him by surprise. He expected grand displays of wealth and power, fitting for the center of the Magocracy, but instead saw art with a purpose. A mosaic of blue glass formed a flowing river that seemed to move when not looked at.

  [Verification Principle] allowed him to look deeper, and he sensed a flow of mana within it, made of layers funneling sound down into sub-basements, where even listening spells cast by tier four mages would fail.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Asteria murmured without glancing his way.

  He hadn’t intended to, but he stilled his fingers all the same.

  Opposite the river, a series of intricately carved stone figures on pedestals seemed almost alive, including a judge, a griffin in mid-leap, and a farmer with a wolf. The stone, matching the building's blue-white glow, was infused with the passive energy of sleeping protocols set to activate under certain conditions.

  They are eerily similar to Eire’s golems, if several times stronger.

  His steps hitched, as the thought of his teacher caused a dull ache under his ribs.

  She sold you out, he reminded himself without venom, though it didn’t change the fact that it hurt. Whether it was cowardice or calculation didn’t matter.

  “Focus,” Asteria said, very softly.

  “I am,” he said, and he was, leaving thoughts of betrayal behind.

  They passed through a rotunda and a threshold marked by two short white stone pillars wrapped in silver. Beyond was a long, straight corridor leading to a tall door, made of silver and blue panels engraved with tiny glyphwork that looked like texture until viewed closely, with the blue surface fused into the metal’s grain.

  Two guards stood by the door, wearing engraved yet simple armor and a single blue band on their shoulders. Despite their plain gear, anyone could tell they weren't ordinary soldiers, since they were tasked with guarding the highest institution of the land. Orion did what he always did and checked them.

  [Elius - Lv. ??] [?? - A-Rank]

  [Rupert - Lv. ??] [?? - A-Rank]

  They were too powerful for his glasses. It had been a while since that happened, but Orion hadn’t expected anything less.

  The Minister continued without pause as the guards crossed their spears in a ceremonial gesture, then withdrew and placed their hafts on the floor with a synchronized strike. Locks disengaged somewhere inside the door with a mechanical click, and its panels swung inward silently.

  The High Council chamber was clearly designed to impress even the most powerful.

  The floor descended in wide concentric steps, amphitheater style, toward a circular well of polished stone, containing nothing but a thin mist that registered as nothing to [Verification Principle].

  Tiered around the well were marble thrones. Thirteen of them—one for each member of the Council’s full House—occupied the inner ring. A second, slightly elevated ring held lesser thrones of varying sizes and decorations for those who weren’t official Council members but were part of the administration. The outermost ring had benches for observers, but was currently empty.

  Orion’s eyes didn’t immediately focus on the inner ring, where the people about to decide his fate sat. Instead, they drifted to a spot about a half level above the floor, on a throne that wasn’t among the thirteen but wasn’t a bench either.

  A man sat there, leaning back with one ankle crossed over his knee and his hands loosely folded. He wore a tailored coat dark enough to absorb the light, and snow-white hair fell in a neat line past his collar, but it wasn’t age that colored it; it was the same unnatural hue Orion saw every morning in the mirror.

  The man looked up, and their eyes locked. Without any words, Orion knew that they recognized each other instantly.

  Almost instinctively, he nudged his glasses’ connection to the System and directed his focus down the runic matrix to inspect.

  Nothing showed up in his view, not even a string of text filled with question marks.

  The man’s mouth crooked into a smirk. He sensed the attempt, Orion could tell. He didn’t know how, but he knew he did.

  So that’s how this is going to be, Orion told himself, and was surprised to find the thought clear. The expected reaction was somewhere between hunger and fury, yet he felt neither, only mild curiosity.

  A movement above drew attention as an extremely old man rose from one of the thirteen thrones. His age made the others seem younger, even the elderly. Considering how powerful he had to be to sit on a throne, he either chose to look that way or was truly ancient.

  His white robe was accented with a blue collar. He carried no staff and didn't need one, as his voice resonated clearly without any magical enhancement.

  “Magistra Asteria Voidwalker of the Lunar Sanctum,” he said, inclining his head at just the right angle to show respect while making it clear he considered himself above them. “Orion Amadeus Voidwalker. Minister Ames.” His gaze shifted to each of them in turn. “Welcome to this chamber. I am Archmage Ephebius Antonius Mallon, Speaker of the Council.”

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  A beat of silence passed, as everyone greeted him.

  “We will begin this session with what brought us here,” he said firmly. “The granddaughter of the Minister of Rites, known publicly as Ophelia, was being pursued. She entered, under exigency, a carriage that also carried Magistra Voidwalker and her son, along with her retinue. This Council believes that urgency can override protocol in life-threatening situations, even though the law requires civilians to be kept at a distance from such matters. I move for the charge of negligence to be dropped.”

  No one objected. The lives of a few non-magicals didn’t matter here.

  “So it is decreed. Next, the carriage was attacked outside Valderun,” Mallon continued. “In the chaos, several bandits and hired blades were killed. These are also charges I move to be struck down.”

  A snort echoed from somewhere on the outer ring as a heavy man in embroidered merchant silks shook his head once, his bejeweled jowls barely moving. For a moment, everyone waited for him to speak, but when he didn’t, the old Archmage acknowledged the dismissal.

  “Following this,” Mallon continued, “the party made their way to the city proper by ship. At this point, the facts begin to tangle. We have reports of the city watch’s rightful intervention; we have other reports of elements within the watch acting beyond their authority."

  He let that sit in the air for a long second, and the air got colder.

  “More importantly,” he said, lowering the pitch of his voice, "there was violence within Valderun. Unsanctioned violence, at that.”

  That last word was the signal for the debate to begin.

  A figure rose from the first ring without waiting for permission. He appeared young by Orion's understanding of draconid standards, all sharp angles and coiled muscles. Two horns arched from his brow, with blade-straight spires glowing with internal citrine light. His blue-black hair was pulled back and braided with shining metal pins. When he spoke, a faint burr carried his words, echoing.

  “Speaker Mallon,” he said, “the Peace was not broken by an attack but by refusal. The Magistra defied a lawful order, and such defiance led to chaos.”

  A ripple of tension spread through the chamber. Orion felt the shift in the current as everyone adjusted their expectations. Such a direct attack, combined with the lack of deference to the Speaker, indicated the draconids were taking a more aggressive stance than anticipated.

  Mallon slowly turned his head, and for a moment, Orion felt a pressure like an old predator's focus across the room. The young dragonlord didn’t lower his gaze, but he quieted and sat. Mallon’s eyes moved on, breaking the moment.

  “We will hear from Captain Thomson of the Valderun watch first,” The old man said, as if there had been no interruption.

  A door in the lower wall swung open, and Captain Thomson stepped through, still in his uniform, though someone had cleaned the worst scuffs off his boots. He looked tired but also resolute.

  “State your name and duty.”

  “Thomson. Captain, Valderun watch.”

  “Describe what happened at the eastern plaza.”

  “We received a report of a drop in the wards outside expected protocols and went to respond. We found four of our own on-site. They did not respond to being challenged. I assessed their intent to be hostile.”

  “On what basis?”

  “They disregarded a direct order. One attempted a binding that could have fatally harmed a restrained civilian. That is not watch procedure. I was then attacked and had to use lethal force.”

  “On one of your own.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the rest?”

  “They were duly neutralized and now are held in our most secure cells.”

  The dragonlord—Lord Varkesh, as someone finally whispered his name—stood again.

  “You did not mention that the Magistra tried to leave custody,” Varkesh said, horns catching the light. “Nor that she refused to submit to an officer’s claim of authority.”

  “I mentioned their hostile intent,” Thomson said in the same flat tone. “Refusing to submit to a false officer is not illegal, and she couldn’t be expected to put herself and her charges in such danger.”

  “How can you call him false? He was a lieutenant of the watch!” Varkesh pressed.

  “He’d used the wrong protocol to lower the wards,” Thomson said, and a workman’s irritation seeped into his words.

  “Let’s stop with the conjecture,” interjected a new voice smoothly. Orion tracked it to a throne where a vampire lord reclined like a man who believed furniture existed to frame him. The vampire’s eyes smiled, and his mouth widened to reveal wickedly sharp canines. “The Captain did what good men do, and decided in the moment.”

  “Let’s not pretend,” said a woman in severe robes with a sword badge at her throat—a Second Order Paladin, by the look of her, not the most powerful, but close enough to carry their word—“that murdering your own for pay is something honest men do.”

  “I did not use the word ‘honest,’ Paladin Geronima,” the vampire said, amused. “I said ‘good.’”

  “Enough,” Mallon said, and silence fell. “Captain, you may step out. Remain available.”

  Thomson nodded and stepped back through the same door. Asteria’s fingers loosened on the arm of her chair, and Orion noticed the indentations her nails had made in the polished wood.

  What followed was a cycle of objections and counter-statements that fell apart into new arrangements. An elf with frost-like hair called for reciprocating precedents; a brocade-clad merchant expressed his concerns about this whole matter being just another way to disrupt trade; a lich in a gray robe—unsettling in its stillness—raised a hand to point out that none of this addressed the original question of the girl’s ownership.

  Varkesh responded to each point firmly, asserting his legal rights and emphasizing his claims. “Ophelia is ours by treaty,” he finally declared, and the temperature in the chamber dropped a few more degrees. “The right to take her into custody is mine, regardless of who accompanies her, as promised and agreed upon by those who faced this Council and asked for our help nine years ago. This entire body is based on false pretenses if you deny that premise. Anyone assisting the girl in fleeing from me is a thief and a criminal.”

  There was the snapping point.

  A silence lingered a heartbeat longer than was comfortable, then another voice cut sharply into it.

  “Lord Varkesh,” Elder Yue said, standing from her throne, her words seeming to reach everywhere at once without sounding loud. “Choose your words carefully. You refer to a Magistra of the Sanctum, my former apprentice at that, who was attacked on your orders."

  Varkesh’s grin this time was not the smooth political smile he had worn until now. It revealed a flash of something that could have been a canine if he’d been human. “Ah, this is an unreconcilable difference in interpretation of the law,” he said, rolling the word “unreconcilable” in his throat, “perhaps we should decide things in the olden ways.”

  Silence.

  Asteria’s hand twitched as she resisted the impulse to cast. The Second Paladin’s face revealed anticipation. The vampire lord’s lips curved in private pleasure, enjoying others’ willingness to set themselves on fire.

  The fat merchant nodded once, neither smiling nor frowning. The elf’s eyes softened with pity born from feeling superior. The lich’s mouth twisted in contempt or boredom—it was hard to tell with so little flesh.

  Across the ring, Archmage Antares shifted his ankle and rested his hands on the armrests of his chair. The faint sound of cloth shifting was surprisingly loud.

  “Lord Varkesh,” Antares said, and it was the first time Orion had heard his father’s voice. It was not deep or booming, but it demanded attention. “Do you understand that threatening a member of this Council—never mind challenging her to a duel—means more than a grievance; it’s a declaration of war against every other faction here.”

  Varkesh blinked once but didn’t back down. The glow along his horns brightened slightly. “I understand,” he said, and if his smile lost some swagger, it gained a hint of sincerity. He looked, Orion realized with some disbelief, almost pleased. Not out of eagerness to start a war, but because someone had finally named the stakes on the same board he’d been playing.

  He likely expects the others to back down instead of risking the Magocracy’s collapse. He might even be right.

  “Enough,” Mallon rumbled.

  He had been silent throughout the entire exchange, observing the currents shifting. Then, with just one word, he changed them all. The air pressure shifted, and a shiver ran down everyone’s spine as the old monster made his displeasure known.

  “We have heard enough,” the Speaker said firmly, with no sign of pleading in his tone. “This is the greatest institution of the Known World, not a venue for boastful displays. Non-council members will leave, and Ministers will vacate unless personally summoned. Witnesses will be recalled if needed. Everyone else, out.”

  Yue did not look away from the dragonlord until the doors closed.

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