The ballroom doors were gold.
Not gold-plated, not gold-painted — gold in the structural sense, the actual composition of the door material, which at the scale of two doors each four metres tall and two metres wide represented an architectural statement that the castle's designer had made with full awareness of what it communicated. This was the room they wanted you to notice. This was the room they had built everything else to lead toward.
Rean stood in front of the gold doors and felt the mana pressure behind them settle against his chest like a hand pressing flat.
S rank.
Full, unambiguous, the kind of reading that his vessel's assessment architecture did not produce uncertainly — when something was S rank the reading was clean, the way a clear note was clean. No gradations. No possibility of misidentification.
He also heard, from behind the doors, the sound of an engagement already in progress.
Rean rushed in.
