"Do you even know" he called, turning so the white of the uniforms became his backdrop, "who stands among you? You lifted up an outsider without a name and a soldier with blood under her nails!"
Feris didn't breathe for a beat. The kind of stillness that starts as discipline and slides into panic when it runs out of air. Raizen felt it beside him like a drop in pressure.
"An unregistered prototype" Marcus went on, voice smooth as a new floor. "A pattern of night movements. A Warden attacked in the Underworks and two cadets fleeing the scene. Traitors to oath. Traitors to city."
Esen swore under his breath. Keahi shifted like a door about to close on someone's hand. Raizen's heart struck once, hard, then learned something.
Neoshima's Hall of Deliberation was not a dark chamber with secrecy carved into the walls. It was glass and light. A dome next to the Spire's shoulder, clear enough to make the sky part of the ceiling and the city part of the floor.
