🦋ALTHEA
​The words landed like a stone in still water, ripples of shock spreading through the room in an instant.
​"What?" Ivanna's voice cracked, disbelief bleeding into outrage.
​"Absolutely not," one of the Zetas said, his hand moving instinctively toward his blade as if the suggestion itself were a threat.
​"Grandmother—" Thorne started, but the Crone raised a gnarled hand, silencing him with the kind of authority that only comes from decades of outliving everyone who dared to question her.
​"Look around you," she said, her voice calm but edged with steel. She gestured to the cracked walls, the scorch marks where the shadows had eaten through stone, and the faint tremor still running through the floor. "Look at the wreckage. Look at what happens every time he loses control."
​The room went quiet again, but this time it wasn't shock; instead, it was recognition. It was a heavy, uncomfortable acknowledgment of a truth they'd all been living with but hadn't wanted to name.
