The words of Elder Maren left behind a silence that did not merely linger — it demanded to be filled.
How irritating, she thought.
The shadows that had once shielded her face had receded. Myra rose slowly, joints protesting with the quiet defiance of a woman who had not slept since the Thirty-Ninth was first Mantled. Her silver hair — usually a symbol of prestige — had devolved into a frayed mess, and the dark circles beneath her eyes looked less like exhaustion and more like bruises carved into porcelain.
As head of the Moon Division — the engine of finance, logistics, and foreign trade — Myra was the clan's unseen architect. Every favour bought, every loan laundered, every grain of rice delivered to the front line began and ended at her desk. She knew where every skeleton was buried because she had usually been the one to authorise the funding for the shovels.
She was exhausted to the bone.
Her greatest wish was retirement, but among the Nyxvalis Elite, the only exit from power was a shroud.
Her resentment for Chion wasn't born of moral outrage or fear of his power — it was the resentment of a worker toward a firebrand who had just burned down her library. Because of this boy, the Patriarch had been a shadow over her shoulder for weeks. Decades of meticulously planned logistics for the Exodus Trial had been scrapped overnight. She was back at the drawing board with the spooks of the Blade Division — men who spoke in blood while she tried to speak in ledgers.
She looked at the cocoon holding Chion with a gaze that wished only for its immediate incineration.
Execute him. Let the logistics be damned.
But she was a creature of process. She would not scream. She would calculate.
"Enough posturing," Myra began. "My eyes ache and my ledgers are bleeding. If we are to decide the fate of this rapidly evolving complication, let us do so with the clarity of a balance sheet."
She smoothed a stray lock of hair aside. "For the sake of what remains of the Council's sanity, I shall simplify this entire ordeal into five criteria. This is how we will measure the Law of Blood."
She raised five weary fingers.
"First: the Council. How does this trial affect our internal stability? Second: the Patriarch. What price do we pay if his wrath is mishandled? Third: the Thirty-Eighth — and the masses beyond them. What story do we tell?"
Her lip tightened.
"Many already resent him, fear him, whisper his name like a contagion. Regardless of our choice, questions will be asked — questions that will reflect upon our moral and institutional integrity."
She did not allow the weight of that statement to linger.
"Fourth: the Thirty-Ninth. What does this trial cost us in regard to them? They are his peers, yet they fear him enough to remain silent — enough to steal classified intelligence on his behalf. What does his death mean to them? What does it cost us?"
Her fingers trembled slightly — not with age, but fatigue.
"And lastly: outcome. What price is the Council willing to pay to control every possible one?"
Her gaze swept across the chamber, lingering on the silenced Riven as though daring him to argue with arithmetic itself.
"I will provide the statistics — the viability of each path, the loss of resources, the projected fallout. I will show you precisely what we lose if he lives, and what we lose if he dies." Her eyes fluttered shut for a brief moment, as though sleep threatened to claim her where she stood. "But I am a woman of numbers, not ghosts. I will require time to finalise the data."
She turned slightly toward the figure who had remained motionless throughout the exchange.
"Time which may be occupied by Elder Sariel, as suggested."
Then she sat.
Not waiting for permission.