The mere thought of Envy dying at Ruler's hand sent a shiver down his spine, and Odin was sure he was not alone in what he was feeling.
The fear that had settled into him as he watched hope being pulled back into a world that had been drowning in despair was present in varying degrees across every guild leader in the chamber.
The shapes it took were different, the specific calculations behind it as individual as the people carrying them, but the root of it was the same.
Vlad did not serve a king the way Odin did, and neither did Aster, but they served the same purpose, and they understood the same stakes, and what they were watching had the same implications for all of them, regardless of the particular arrangements that had brought each of them to this room.
'Damn all of it.' The curse moved through Odin's mind with the quiet, contained force of something that had been building for a while and had finally found a form compact enough to be useful.
