The vestibule had two things: a ceiling that didn't need your opinion and a door that did. It was a heavy slab of black metal, fitted into a brass frame that had been polished by a thousand careful hands over centuries. There was no latch, no keyhole, and no hinge. There was only a thin, perfect line down its center and a single, engraved sentence that hummed with ancient, impersonal authority.
STATE YOUR NAME.
"Bold," Valeria clicked her tongue inside my mind. "Door HR."
'Hostile etiquette,' Erebus noted, his presence a cool shadow at the edge of my senses.
I could feel Lysantra's influence here, but it was thin, a faint trace of perfume caught in the weave of an old, heavy coat. Underneath it was the steady, metronomic beat of Julius's Order. Not a rhythm imposed on people, but a rhythm set under them, the way a good road keeps an entire city from rolling an ankle.
