It arrived before anyone understood what it was - a concussive impact of tremendous force that reached the hall not through the air but through the stone itself, traveling up through the palace floor and into the feet and legs of every person standing in it before it registered as sound at all. The walls caught it a fraction of a second later and sent it back from multiple directions simultaneously, a deep resonant bang that had no obvious source because the source was outside and the stone was carrying the information inward from every direction at once.
The hall went absolutely silent.
Every head turned toward the entrance. Every conversation, every murmur, every prepared argument died in the same instant, replaced by the collective held breath of several hundred people who had just felt something significant happen and did not yet know what it was.
