The room held the kind of silence that makes sound think twice. The ribs of the hall glowed faintly; copper ran under the floor like sleeping veins. Lynea sat in the middle ring with her hands on her knees, fragments quiet at her shoulder as if they, too, were listening.
She began the way a careful driver eases a carriage into motion: not with drama, but with a steadying breath.
"My family" she said, "belonged to a thing most of you have only heard as rumor, if at all." Then, she looked down: "The Moirai."
She watched neither of them. She watched the space in front of her, as if laying planks over a gap one sentence at a time.
"Once - long before us three, but not so long the dust forgot it - the Underworks were smothered by Wardens. Not the guards the surface hires to scowl at doors. Wardens that think people are numbers that need to be sorted. They came down with ledgers and guns and a way of folding fear into law."
