He tilted his head slightly, gaze steady, expression unreadable. "Tell them it collapsed because it met me."
For a heartbeat, she forgot to breathe. The confidence in his tone wasn't arrogance; it was something heavier, born from certainty and blood. Her lips parted, but no words came. When she found her voice again, it carried a soft laugh to cover the warmth rising in her cheeks.
"Of course. I'll note that exactly."
Viera's quill lay forgotten beside the ledger. The soft scratching of others writing around the hall faded into distance, like noise behind glass. She couldn't stop looking at him. There was no exhaustion in his face, no tremor in his hands. Men who returned from lesser dungeons usually staggered in, pale and shaking from mana bleed. Xavier looked as though he'd stepped out of a storm that had chosen not to touch him.
He rested an elbow on the counter, posture loose but eyes sharp. "You said the Association verified it. How long before word reaches the Capital?"
