The moment they stepped through the door, all three Devas looked up.
It was not a gradual thing — not the casual glance of people noticing new arrivals in a room. All three of them turned at the same instant, with the focused attention of people who had been expecting this moment and had already formed opinions about it before it arrived. The weight of that collective attention hit Rudra immediately.
The atmosphere in the room tightened.
He told himself it was nerves. The room was plain — white walls with a few decorative patterns running along the upper edges, a stone floor, light coming from no obvious source. At its centre sat a large U-shaped table with five chairs arranged around it — two on each side, one in the middle. It should have felt institutional. Manageable.
It didn't. Something in the air pushed back against the ordinary appearance of the space, a pressure that had nothing to do with the room itself and everything to do with the three people sitting in it.
Edward stepped forward. "Sorry for being late."
The Deva sitting alone at the far end of the table spoke first.
"He isn't here yet, which means you are not late." His eyes moved from Edward to Rudra with the unhurried assessment of someone who has already decided what they think and is simply confirming it. "Is this the one you have been talking about?"
"Yes," Edward said. "This is the new holder of the Power Stone. Next to him is Arjun, who is equally valuable."
The Deva's expression shifted. It was subtle — a slight change around the eyes and mouth that Rudra, who had spent enough time reading people in difficult situations to have become reasonably good at it, clocked immediately. Not confusion. Not scepticism. Something closer to contempt, directed at both of them with equal measure.
The anger arrived before Rudra had made any decision to be angry. He caught it, held it, and reminded himself of what Edward had said in the corridor. He managed a smile that was approximately forty percent genuine and directed it at the middle of the room rather than at anyone specifically.
Edward glanced at him, apparently satisfied that the smile had appeared, and began the introductions.
"The gentleman sitting alone is lord Julius Marais, of House Marais. The Water Deva." A pause. [ability: Infinite Evolution]
Julius inclined his head with the minimal movement of someone who considers acknowledgment sufficient.
Edward turned toward the two Devas seated on the opposite side of the table. The one closest to the door had an expression that Rudra genuinely could not read — there was something at the corners of his mouth that might have been amusement, or might have been a default resting expression, or might have been something else entirely. It was the kind of face that made you aware of how much information you were failing to gather.
"The gentleman on the end is Lucien Aerrowyn. The Wind Deva." [ability: Sword Dance]
Lucien's expression did not change. He offered a small nod that communicated absolutely nothing about what he was thinking.
"And next to him —"
Rudra had already noticed. He had noticed before Edward said anything, because the person sitting beside Lucien was clearly not the same category of person as the others in the room, and the contrast was striking enough that it took a moment to reconcile.
He looked young. Not young the way someone in their late twenties looks young — young in the way that made Rudra do a quick internal calculation and arrive at an answer somewhere around fifteen. Maybe a little older. Not by much. He was the youngest person in the room by a significant distance, which was already strange enough. What made it stranger was that nobody in the room seemed to find this strange at all.
"— is Silas Thorne. The Forest Deva." [ability: Monkey Under the Rock]
Silas did not nod. He did not incline his head. What he did was stand up, which nobody had apparently expected, and walk around the table with the direct purposefulness of someone who has identified something they want to look at more closely and sees no reason to do otherwise.
He stopped in front of Rudra.
He was taller than he had appeared sitting down. Close to Rudra's own height, which was another thing that didn't quite fit the impression of someone who looked fifteen. He looked at Rudra with the focused, slightly invasive attention of someone examining something rather than greeting them, his eyes moving in a way that suggested he was reading something Rudra couldn't see.
Then he looked at Arjun.
"Is this really the one you cannot stop talking about?" He addressed Edward without taking his eyes off Rudra. "Look at his soul. It is leaking everywhere." Then, shifting to Arjun: "And this one — he has so little I can barely see it."
Rudra had no idea what Silas was referring to. Soul, leaking, barely visible — none of it connected to anything in his frame of reference. What he did understand, clearly and without ambiguity, was the tone. Whatever Silas was describing, he was not being complimentary about either of them.
The anger that had been sitting quietly since Julius's expression made a second, stronger attempt to surface.
Edward stepped in before it could.
"They may appear weak which they sadly are," he said, and Rudra noticed with some discomfort that Edward did not appear to be disagreeing with the assessment so much as contextualising it, "but both of them carry potential significant enough that I believe they could reach Deva level."
'Is he praising us or insulting us?' Rudra thought. 'I genuinely cannot tell.'
The expression on Rudra's face and the expression on Arjun's face were, for once, identical — the particular look of two people who have both registered the same ambiguous statement and are both privately deciding how to feel about it.
The temperature in the room — metaphorically, though it almost felt literal — continued to rise.
Lucien, who had been watching all of this from his seat with that unreadable expression, chose this moment to contribute.
"I understand what you are saying about potential," he said, his voice measured and unhurried. "But they are already this age. The window for developing the kind of ability you are describing — how much of it is realistically left?"
The question landed cleanly. Edward went silent.
It was a fair point and everyone in the room appeared to know it. Most Soul Fighters began their training as soon as they start waking. The physical and technical foundations took years to build properly, and starting late meant the ceiling would always be lower than it might have been. Rudra and Arjun were not children. Whatever they could become, they were already partway through the window in which becoming it was most possible.
Silas burst out laughing.
It was a full, genuine laugh — the kind that doesn't care what room it's in or who is listening, the kind that arrives before the person has made any decision to laugh. He pointed at Lucien with one hand. "You are completely right! How did I not think of that?!"
The sound of it filled the room.
And then the door opened.
The laughter stopped.
Not gradually. Not because anyone made a conscious choice to stop. It simply ceased, the way sound ceases when something large and immediate replaces it. Silas straightened. Lucien's expression, already unreadable, became something more careful. Julius, who had barely moved since they entered, sat up slightly.
Edward turned toward the door.
Every person in the room was standing. Rudra wasn't entirely sure when he had stood up — he had simply found himself on his feet, the same way you find yourself stepping back from something without having decided to step back.
The man who walked through the door was old.
Not old in the polite, euphemistic way — genuinely, substantially, unmistakably old. His hair was long and grey, falling past his shoulders with the kind of natural weight that takes decades to develop. His beard matched it — full, grey, worn without any particular care for its shape, as though the question of what his beard looked like had not occupied his attention for quite some time. His face was lined in the specific way of someone who has spent most of their life in difficult conditions. His eyes, when they found the room, were clear.
He walked to the remaining chair — the one at the closed end of the U, the middle seat — and sat down without acknowledging the silence his entrance had produced.
Rudra looked at him and felt something that wasn't quite fear but was adjacent to it. The Devas in the room — people who had made the air feel tight simply by being in it — had reacted to this man's arrival the way ordinary people react to something they genuinely respect. That was different information from anything the room had given him so far.
This man had come from an era said to be the strongest generation of Soul Fighters in the last hundred years, and he had stood as the strongest among them. He had earned the title 'God of War' through his actions in the 'Battle of Great Heavens'. He was the Head Deva — the one who made the final decisions. In short he's the living represention of living legend.
This is lord Alistair Stromborn. Head of House Stromborn. The Thunder Deva. [ability: Karma Always Comes Back]
Alistair looked at Rudra.
He did not look at Arjun. He did not look at Edward or at the other Devas. He looked at Rudra with the particular, unhurried attention of someone who has been doing this long enough to know exactly what they are looking for and has already found it.
The silence stretched.
Then he spoke.
"Show me your stone."