The council does not survive the night intact.
By morning, the chamber feels smaller. Not physically. Politically. Chairs sit empty where elders should be, some abandoned in haste, others deliberately left vacant like quiet statements of dissent. Voices rise too quickly and fracture too easily, overlapping instead of building toward anything useful. Fear has stripped the veneer off authority, leaving raw instinct and self preservation behind, naked and unconvincing.
“This cannot continue,” one elder says, pacing a tight line across the stone floor. “We were breached. Openly. In front of civilians. The wards failed.”
“And we survived because of her,” another snaps back, pointing at me without looking, as if acknowledging my presence directly might invite something worse. “You saw what sh
