The room was white and gold.
It was a small chamber somewhere in the outer rings of the Coliseum of a Thousand Ascendant Glories, tucked away from the massing crowds, appointed for honored contestants and their companions. White stone walls. Gold inlays that ran along every seam, humming faintly with ambient Civilizations. Low benches. A single high window through which the slow orbit of a gold statue passed and passed again.
Three figures waited inside it.
Achilles sat on one of the benches with Rose tucked against his side, her fiery green hair catching the gold of the inlays and throwing it back warmer. THE Watcher drifted near the high window, platinum singularity quieter than it had been at any point since the flood, golden lotus petals turning at a pace that was not quite rhythm anymore.
THE Watcher spoke.
