The air in the Vatican's deepest vault didn't just smell of dust and incense. It smelled of waiting.
Three hundred feet beneath St. Peter's Basilica, past layers of lead-lined stone and forgotten catacombs, the Chamber of Silent Accord hadn't been opened in eighty years. Not since the last Blood Moon Pact collapsed into betrayal and ash.
Now, twelve figures sat around a black obsidian table shaped like a broken ring—each gap between seats representing a lineage lost to time.
Candles burned with green flames. No wax dripped. The fire fed on memory, not fuel.
At the head—though no one here acknowledged hierarchy—sat Matteo Valerius, last scion of the House of Janus. His face was lined like old parchment, but his eyes held the sharpness of a blade never sheathed.
"She bent time," he said, voice dry as bone. "Not space. Not energy. Time. Like it was clay."
