Archon Seret called the hall to order well before the last of the lesser attendants could have taken a place.
She was Authority of Bound Thresholds, and the room answered her call as doors answered keys. Pillars of compressed dawn held a ceiling impossible to have been built by mortal hands. Beneath the arches, a living map of constellations shifted slow record, marking the domains, breaches and corrections of an administered cosmos. This was not a court of kings. It was a chamber of function. Every high seat belonged to a being who governed an aspect of existence.
They were the Authorities.
Not Lords. That rank sat above them and was rarer and older, and every single person present knew the difference.
