"So," Ethan said, his voice cold and steady, snapping them out of their trance. "Since the quality is verified, I believe the price just went up. What do you have that is worth a Grade 4 life, Madam?"
The old woman looked at Ethan, no longer seeing a young man, but a titan holding the power of life and death in his palm. She reached into a hidden pocket in her robes and pulled out a small, velvet pouch, her hands shaking.
"I have something," she whispered. "Something the Union has been hunting for decades."
The old woman's fingers fumbled with the drawstring of the velvet pouch. She looked at Zwager, then at Ethan, her eyes darting toward the door as if expecting the elite guards to burst in at any moment.
"I am the last of the Blackmoon lineage," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "My family were the keepers of the Great Seal of Avalon. Most believe it was destroyed during the Great Purge, but my grandfather bled to keep a fragment of it safe."
