***
{Outside The Projection}
That scene was sudden.
Too sudden... cold.
The world saw no preamble.
No festival scenes, smiling nobles, not even a single drumbeat.
People in the hall had braced themselves for the usual: some long, perhaps a little drawn-out farewell, maybe a moment or two or three of tension. Some push and pull, just something soft before the fall.
But Malik apparently didn't remember the 'soft.'
Which meant it never mattered to him, at least not enough to be remembered.
So the projection didn't show it.
It jumped straight to the fire, the speech, the sky tearing open.
And the silence in the hall began to deafen as it usually did.
No one said a word, not even the "main characters."
The eight of them just stared.
It was too much to process.
