POV: Aphrodite
Courts do not welcome. They evaluate.
The throne room is the largest space we've moved through since entering the King's territory and it has the same quality as everything else here — built for a scale that ordinary things don't match, every proportion slightly larger than it needs to be, every ceiling slightly higher, every column slightly wider. The effect isn't grandeur. It's the specific atmosphere of a space designed to make whatever stands inside it feel smaller than it is.
I am not going to feel smaller than I am.
I hold onto that thought the way I've been holding onto things throughout this journey — not as a declaration I make loudly, just as a fact I keep returning to when the weight of a place starts to press on me. I am what I am and the stone around me doesn't change that and I don't need to announce it, I just need to keep knowing it.
