[The Wine Shop — Evening — The Same Day]
The evening did not fall—it poured.
Amber light bled through the latticed windows of the wine house, staining the chamber in hues of honey and old gold. Outside, the city whispered in low, restless murmurs—merchants closing their ledgers, distant hooves striking stone, the wind dragging secrets through narrow alleys like a patient thief.
Inside, silence ruled.
A different kind of silence, one that listened and one that remembered. Raviel sat behind a low ebony table, its surface cluttered with scrolls, wax seals, and a single object that seemed to command the very air around it.
A pink diamond necklace.
It did not merely shine—it watched.
The gem caught the dim light and fractured it into soft, dangerous glimmers, as though it held within it the memory of blood, of crowns, of whispered betrayals beneath silk curtains.
Raviel turned it slowly between his fingers, his gaze sharp, calculating… almost reverent.
