The doors opened, spilling the hush of expectation into the corridor. Twelve pairs of eyes lifted at once as Victor entered, Samael at his side, Ashwin two steps behind.
For a breath, the board forgot to rise. They had seen Victor before, of course, in his wheelchair, remote and untouchable, a figure whose presence was more rumor than flesh. But now the man walked. Not stiffly, not with the hesitation of someone barely recovered, but with the steady ease of someone for whom the world parted naturally.
Chairs scraped belatedly as the twelve came to their feet. None of them spoke the question clinging to their throats, but the air thickened with it: How?
They all knew the whispers, the half-mocked rumors that Victor was more than a man. Stories of gods devoured, of power stitched into bone. They had dismissed them as myth, convenient propaganda to inflate the Numen name. Yet the sight of him, young, tall, shoulders squared without the weight of wheels, gnawed at their certainty.
