The chamber loomed, vast yet suffocating, a paradox of grandeur and oppression. Its high, vaulted ceilings bore murals of long-forgotten triumphs—battles fought in another era, heroes whose names had long since turned to dust. Time had not faded their depictions, nor softened the brutality captured in each masterfully painted stroke. Conquering armies, kneeling subjects, the gods themselves bearing witness to bloodshed that shaped history.
The candlelight flickered weakly, casting restless shadows that danced along the chamber's obsidian walls, their polished surfaces reflecting glimmers of gold, crimson, and deep indigo. A massive, circular table of the same dark stone stood at the room's center, its surface so finely cut that it gleamed like a pool of black water. Four figures sat around it, their mere presence enough to suffocate the air with unspoken tension. The weight of their ambitions, their machinations, their histories—they pressed against one another, each blade held against the other's throat in an elaborate game of measured breaths and poised silence.
Empress Galjastiviel Basillius sat with the bearing of a woman who did not consider herself mortal. Draped in the imperial regalia of the Basillian Empire, her crimson robes cascaded over her throne-like seat, the intricate golden embroidery forming the sigil of her dynasty—a serpent devouring its own tail, the eternal cycle of conquest. She exuded regal madness, the kind that made lesser men tremble, not because it was wild and unhinged, but because it was deliberate. Calculated. Volatile in the way a controlled flame could still burn everything to ash. Her fingers idly traced the embroidered patterns along her sleeves as she watched the others, her lips curled in an unreadable smile. A queen awaiting the first move in a game she already believed herself to have won.
Across from her, Overlord Malkvias of the Fräuggler Federation embodied a stark contrast. He was stillness incarnate, his posture a sculpted monument to restraint. Born from the frozen expanse of the northern tundras, he carried the cold within him—a man who spoke only when necessary, who reduced battlefields to equations and victories to inevitabilities. His face was carved from ice, his pale-blue eyes moving with precision, taking in everything yet betraying nothing. The Federation called him a master tactician. His enemies called him a machine in human skin. Neither was incorrect.
To his right sat Elder Tornajar, the so-called Holy Father of the Sereon Theocracy, a man draped in ceremonial robes so adorned with sacred metals they shimmered like divine relics. Rings of consecrated gold and iron encased his fingers, tapping in a slow, deliberate rhythm against the armrest of his chair. Many knew him as the voice of the gods, a beacon of spiritual will. But those who had witnessed his purges, those who had seen him order the drowning of heretics in their own blood, knew the truth. He was no beacon—he was a pyre, burning all who dared stray from his dictated path.
The fourth and final seat was occupied by the Grand Minister Mornarth of the Republic of Pavalor. He sat forward slightly, the only one among them who did not feign detachment. His rings—emblems of wealth and power—glinted under the candlelight as he folded his hands together, a gesture that exuded casual authority. The Republic was built on commerce, on negotiations stacked atop one another like a precarious tower, and Mornarth was its finest architect. He reeked of layered schemes, of strategies within strategies. He was a man who could sell his own country for a better bid and still convince the world he had done it for their benefit.
The silence between them stretched, thin as wire, ready to snap.
It was the Empress who chose to cut it.
"Well," she murmured, her voice as smooth as poisoned honey. "That wretched rift. That anomaly. What a marvel... and what a mess."
The others did not immediately respond. Malkvias was the first to acknowledge her words, his tone devoid of warmth.
"Mess is a light term, Your Majesty. The rift did not behave as expected. We were wise to use mercenaries as prospects."
Tornajar scoffed. "Mercenaries, yes. Fools without faith. Disposable assets. Yet even they could not comprehend what they stumbled into."
Mornarth chuckled, the sound like rusted gears grinding together. "Fortunate, then, that they served their purpose before they perished." His gaze slid toward Malkvias, sharp as a dagger. "Or before they... vanished."
The air thickened, an unspoken weight pressing down on the chamber.
"The woman, Lanni," Malkvias said at last, his eyes narrowing slightly. "We all assumed she would not survive. And yet..."
"No trace of her," Galjastiviel finished for him, her lips curving upward in that familiar, knowing way. "No sightings, no whispers. A ghost in the aftermath."
Tornajar sneered. "A lone specter wandering the ruins of her failure. What does it matter? The rift swallowed her and spat her out. That is punishment enough."
Mornarth, however, was less convinced. "A woman who crawled out of something none of us fully understand? We should be concerned."
Malkvias exhaled slowly. "Concerned? No. Aware? Yes. She may still be of use. Or a threat."
The Empress tapped her fingers against the table, the rhythmic sound like the ticking of an unseen clock. "Perhaps she is neither. Perhaps she is nothing. But if she is something... I would like to know."
A hush fell over them again, but it was no longer the silence of unspoken hostilities. It was the silence of calculation, of understanding that the game had shifted in ways none of them had foreseen. The weight of the rift, of what had transpired, of what they still did not understand, loomed over them all.
"We should not dwell on ghosts," Tornajar finally muttered. "We should dwell on results. The rift is unlike any before it. That, we can agree upon."
"Yes," Mornarth admitted, though he did not like it. "It did not simply open. It... consumed."
"Bled into our world like an infection," Malkvias added.
Galjastiviel tilted her head, her grin widening. "Then, gentlemen, I must ask—if we have created something beyond our expectations, do we fear it... or do we claim it?"
Silence.
The council had no answer yet, but they knew one thing: the rift had changed something. And the world, whether it wished to or not, would soon have to reckon with it.