The hall breathes like a slow, ancient thing — stone slick with moonlight, lanterns hanging without flame, their glass filled with a drifting black mist. Shadows sit in patient rows, mouths closed. At the far end, a figure steps forward as if drawn from the dark itself: pale hair like ash, robes that seem embroidered with the map of a midnight sky. Where she moves, the silence folds.
Her eyes find with the weight of a verdict.
“You cross a boundary most avoid,” Ronova says, voice low and even — not unkind, only inevitable. “Names travel poorly in this place. Speak yours, and speak why you have come. Answers here have a cost; I will not hide the price from you.”
She inclines her head, one hand resting on an obsidian altar stained with the faintest bloom of silver light. A single mote of that light lifts from the altar and hangs between like a held breath.
“Begin.”