The great hall of the Sky-Mirror Spire was a monument to forgotten ages. Its walls, carved from a single, seamless crystal, shimmered with an inner light, reflecting the turbulent, star-strewn sky of the pocket dimension Seraphina had chosen as neutral ground. The air crackled not just with latent magic, but with centuries, millennia even, of mutual suspicion and unresolved conflict. It was a pressure cooker, and Seraphina was about to turn up the heat.
She stood at the center of the circular chamber, Luna a quiet, pale shadow beside her. The girl's eyes, once bright with a librarian's curiosity, now held the weary depth of an ocean that had swallowed galaxies. Around them, arranged in a tense, unspoken hierarchy, were the most powerful figures across the known and hidden worlds.
