Selene’s POV
When the shouting faded, what remained was silence — deep, vast, almost holy.
The council chamber looked different now, though nothing had truly changed. The same torches burned; the same banners hung. Yet the air itself felt altered, lighter somehow, as if years of smoke and fear had finally begun to thin.
Kael still stood before his father, the stormlight falling over his shoulders in pale ribbons. He hadn’t moved since the last word left his mouth. Every line of him — the set of his jaw, the square of his shoulders — carried both exhaustion and quiet triumph.
Malrik, for the first time in memory, looked small. Not weak, not beaten — just diminished. The kind of man stripped of his audience, left only with his own echo.
The elders watched in silence, their faces carved
