The light didn't fade—it condensed.
One moment, Luna stood alone in the dissolving amphitheater, clutching the moss-seed like a secret. The next, she was somewhere else. Somewhere colder. Sharper.
A chamber of pure geometry.
Walls of shifting silver, floor of mirrored obsidian, ceiling lost in infinite recursion. No doors. No windows. Just silence so absolute it hummed in her molars.
And at the center—forty-seven thrones.
Not carved. Not built. Grown from solidified time and authority. Each one pulsed with the weight of a civilization's history. And on every throne sat a figure cloaked in light too bright to look at directly.
The Supreme Consuls.
Not avatars. Not projections.
Themselves.
Luna's breath hitched. Her body still ached from the healings, her hands still older than her memories. She straightened her shoulders anyway. Wiped her palms on her tunic—still the same one she'd worn when she left Earth, now frayed at the cuffs and stained with starlight.
