The silence in the chamber was heavier than a tomb.
Magnus did not sit immediately. He stood behind the high-backed seventh chair, his large, pale hands resting flat against the carved stone headrest. The pale blue light from the central orb seemed to recoil from him, illuminating only the lower edge of his heavy midnight-gray robes while his face remained bathed in the terrifying, golden luminance of his own eyes.
None of the four seated members dared to breathe.
Man 3, who had slammed the table with enough force to rattle the stone only minutes prior, kept his gaze pinned firmly to the basalt floor, his thick neck corded with tension as he fought the instinct to flinch.
Woman 1's knuckles were bone-white against the table, her earlier hysteria strangled completely in her throat. Even Woman 3, whose face had remained an unyielding mask of stone for sixty years, sat with her spine rigid, acknowledging the supreme, lethal presence that had just claimed the room.
