The emperor did not return to the empty council chamber.
He went instead to a smaller room two levels below the public galleries, a place the upper halls preferred to pretend did not exist. The air there was colder, stripped of the polite hum that filled the rest of the palace.
No soft lights. No attendants hovering with reports. Just stone, silence, and the kind of wards that answered only to his blood and to two others.
He stood in the center of the floor and spoke two names.
The first to arrive was the wizard.
She entered without announcement, as she always had. Tall, gray at the temples, dressed in the unmarked black of someone who had stopped needing insignia decades ago.
Power clung to her the way gravity clung to stone—unavoidable, absolute, and entirely under her control.
She was the most dangerous practitioner still loyal to the seat, and the only one the emperor trusted with the truth of his bloodline.
"You called," she said. Her voice was dry as old paper.
