Lirael stood in the quiet space between realities and waited for judgment.
The chamber was not a room in any ordinary sense. It was a hollow of pale light and shifting geometry, where the walls breathed and the floor never quite decided if it was solid. Three figures sat before her on thrones that were more suggestion than substance. They had no faces she could name, only the weight of ages pressed into the air around them. The Aethel itself, or at least the voices that spoke for it.
She kept her hands folded and her posture straight. The avatar she wore for these meetings was the elegant one—midnight robes, starlit eyes, the perfect instrument of balance. The real Lirael stayed buried somewhere deeper.
"You failed," the central voice said. It was neither male nor female, only vast.
