The air in the hall, already thick with anticipation, shifted. It did not stir; it congealed. The murmured conversations of the Starks elders, hunters, promising youth died not out of respect, but necessity. It became difficult to breathe, as if the atmosphere itself had turned to stone, pressing down on chests, threatening to crack ribs.
The great oak doors groaned inward.
He did not merely enter; he imposed himself upon the space. Edward Stark, Patriarch of House Stark. A man carved from winter and wrath. A fur coat, the pelt of some colossal frost-beast, hung from his broad shoulders. A cigar, its tip glowing like a damned star, was clamped between teeth set in a jaw that looked hewn from granite. He was undeniably handsome, his features a roadmap of harsh nobility that Azriel's own face mirrored with cruel perfection.
But where the son's eyes were a bloody crimson, windows to a soul that had seen the abyss and laughed, the father's were a deep, glacial blue. They were not eyes that saw you; they were eyes that measured you, found you wanting, and assigned you a value. Transparent, pitiless, and cold as a glacier's heart.
The pressure radiating from him was a physical force. It washed over the hall, a wave of pure dominance. The weak and the young crumpled immediately; young ones and low-ranking attendants sank to their knees, heads bowing as they fought for air.
But the Starks were a line of warriors. Senior hunters, their faces scarred and their wills tempered in real battle, braced themselves. Their bodies grew taut, muscles corded with strain. Their feet remained planted, but the cost was clear in their gritted teeth and white knuckles. They endured. They resisted.
And then there was Azriel.
He stood slightly apart, a silhouette of casual arrogance against the wall. The pressure that made veterans sweat and struggle washed over him and simply broke, like a wave against a cliff of obsidian. There was no tension in his frame, no bracing for impact. He was utterly, infuriatingly unaffected. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips.
'How predictable. Establish dominance. Remind the cattle of their place.'
He took a slow, deliberate breath, not of struggle, but of appraisal, sipping the charged air like a fine wine.
Edward Stark's gaze swept the room, a king surveying his domain. It noted the kneeling weak, the straining strong. Then it landed on his son the only one completely at ease, the only one whose gaze held not struggle, but a bottomless, amused contempt. Something unreadable flickered in those ice-blue depths. Not approval. Not curiosity. Perhaps the faintest recognition of an otherness that was entirely alien.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the pressure vanished.
It was like the slashing of a taut rope. The kneeling figures slumped, gasping. The hunters straightened, their relieved exhales sharp in the new silence.
The Patriarch said nothing. He moved through the parted crowd, each footfall a final, heavy verdict on the stone. He ascended the dais and settled into the great throne of dark ironwood, a seat high enough to ensure he only ever looked down on everyone. He took a long, slow drag from his cigar, the smoke wreathing his head like a storm cloud.
Finally, his voice rolled out, deep and resonant, the sound of grinding continental plates. It required no volume to command absolute silence.
"Begin."
The word was not an invitation. It was a law.
The hunters, jolted into action, began guiding the first trembling children toward the awakening circle. The ceremony commenced, the familiar hum of mana rising to fill the space.
Yet Azriel remained at the where he stood. His bloody crimson eyes tracked the proceedings not with interest, but with a profound, ancient amusement. He was a wolf watching puppies play.
His father on the throne observed it all, a statue wreathed in smoke, his glacial eyes missing nothing.
When the moment suited him, Azriel moved.
He did not wait for a hunter's summons. He did not ask for permission. He simply pushed himself off the wall and walked, a solitary figure cutting a path through the hushed activity. His steps were silent, his posture one of utter disregard for the sacred proceedings.
A senior hunter, his face still flushed from resisting the Patriarch's pressure, moved to intercept him, his mouth opening to demand an explanation. His eyes met Azriel's a glimpse of that bloody crimson gaze, that bottomless, chilling amusement—and the command died in his throat. The hunter faltered, his hard-won courage evaporating under a presence that felt far older and more dangerous than the Patriarch's. He stepped back, yielding without a sound.
No one else dared. They felt him pass a colder shadow, a heavier silence within the silence.
Only one person in the hall had the authority to challenge him. The man on the throne.
Azriel felt his father's gaze upon him, a weight as tangible as the earlier pressure. He did not look back. He did not acknowledge it. He simply continued his unhurried walk toward the awakening circle, a king walking toward his rightful due.
High on his throne, Edward Stark took another long drag from his cigar. The ice in his eyes did not melt, but it did shift, calculating. He watched his son, this beautiful, dangerous enigma, and he said nothing.
He did not care about the rules. He only cared about the result.
And Azriel knew, with that same weary certainty he'd carried to the scaffold, that his father already understood. The game within the game had just begun.