The Castle Beneath Rome
The chamber existed in geological strata that predated Roman engineering, carved when the city above had been pastoral settlements rather than imperial capital. Stone walls bore marks of tools that modern archaeology couldn't classify. Air carried the weight of two millennia worth of deliberations conducted in darkness that electric lighting could illuminate but never truly dispel.
Lysander Ravencroft stood at the head of the oval table, his two-thousand-year-old frame carrying authority that transcended any formal designation. Around him, twelve beings who collectively represented supernatural civilization's oldest continuous governance structures. Not the largest faction. Not the most publicly visible. But the most persistent—survivors of empires, religions, and ideological frameworks that had risen and collapsed while they'd simply continued existing.
