The meeting room felt smaller than it should.
Maybe because of what it now contained, the weight of loss, of decisions made under impossible circumstances, of people trying to hold shape when everything around them had dissolved.
Mordax sat outside on what remained of a stone statue near the meeting room's open wall, the wall that faced the eastern sky, the direction from which the attacks had come.
His massive frame was still for once. No weapons in any of his four hands. Just sitting. Looking up at the space where vampire forces had torn through demon defenses like they were suggestion rather than reality.
His obsidian skin caught the dim light. The cracks from essence exhaustion had partially healed but remained visible, fault lines running through him like a map of what the last week had cost.
Inside, Elara sat at the table.
