= Mikael =
I stepped into the council hall with Amara at my side, and immediately, the silence hit me like a wall. It wasn’t the empty, polite kind of silence you might expect in a room between words. No, this was a silence thick with expectation, steeped in history, and laced with judgment—heavy enough to make your chest ache just from standing in it.
The hall stretched out before us in rigid, calculated symmetry. Long tables ran like veins across polished stone floors, each chair perfectly aligned, each corner sharp and deliberate. The elders’ seats were raised slightly above the rest, a subtle, undeniable declaration of the power they wielded. Every detail whispered authority, and every inch of the space reminded me that we were walking into more than just a room—we were stepping into
