The war room of Ebonreach felt like a tomb shaped from living darkness.
Walls of sleek black glass soared twenty meters high, laced with streaks of starlit silver that pulsed slowly, like veins under pale skin.
Above the central obsidian table drifted a dozen scrying projections—maps bleeding crimson, intercepted messages appearing and vanishing the instant they were read.
Tap.... Tap... Tap...
Aster sat alone at the center of the table, tapping a slow, steady rhythm on the glass, each beat in sync with the silver veins pulsing through the walls.
His shadow stretched far behind him, too long and too sharp, as if it belonged to something much larger than the lean, twenty-seven-year-old man it followed.
He closed his eyes.
The air shifted, the temperature falling.
The presence that settled over him wasn't the King or the warrior, but the scholar—someone who craved knowledge as others crave power.
