A woman. Older. Silver-haired, the specific silver of someone a long way past a hundred. Faction insignia Eve didn't immediately recognize. She had risen from her seat with the slow deliberateness of someone whose body was making a decision her mind hadn't fully authorized yet.
She stood.
Then she went to her knees.
Not dramatically. Not performatively. Just.....descended. Both knees on the stone floor of the tiered seating, her hands in her lap, her face doing something complicated and entirely unguarded.
Silence.
Then the man beside her stood. Slower. Older even than she was. And knelt.
Then someone in the second row.
Not everyone. Not a wave, not a choreographed moment. Just....individuals, one at a time, in their own time, making a decision that had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with what they were feeling in their bodies in this specific moment.
Seven people. Eight. Nine.
