"How many?" Seraphina asked sharply.
A pause. Caelum's expression grew more troubled. "More than I'm comfortable admitting. But I'd like to hear what others have experienced before I reveal the full scope."
The temple fell silent. No one rushed to volunteer information.
"I've had failures," Seraphina admitted reluctantly. "Not catastrophic, but unusual."
"Define unusual," Vex drawled.
"Define your losses first," Seraphina shot back.
Vex's smile was sharp. "Ladies first, I insist."
The tension in the temple ratcheted higher. Each Death Lord watching the others, calculating, weighing whether cooperation served their interests or exposed vulnerabilities.
"This is why I called the council," Caelum said with reproach. "If we can't trust each other enough to share information, how can we address a crisis that threatens all our domains?"
More silence. The weight of centuries of rivalry and suspicion hanging in the air.
Finally, Thessa spoke, her voice barely a whisper. "Two stones in my domain have gone dark. Ancient stones that survived the realm wars. Their loss troubles me."
"Two," Caelum repeated thoughtfully. "Thank you for your honesty, sister." He turned to Seraphina. "And you?"
Seraphina's jaw tightened, clearly unhappy about revealing weakness. "Three stones. All border wards."
"Five in mine," Vex admitted after another pause. "Though my operations remain unaffected."
All eyes turned to Dante.
He weighed what to tell them. The others didn't need to know the full extent of the damage in his territory. Not yet. Not until he understood what was happening.
"Two failures in my territory this week," he said. "Both ancient stones that should have lasted another millennium."
"And I've lost six," Caelum said quietly. "Six stones in the past week alone."
The number stunned the assembled Death Lords into silence.
"Six?" Seraphina repeated. "In one week?"
Caelum nodded gravely. "My domain has been hit hardest, though I can't fathom why. Natural deaths should be the most stable transition."
"That's eighteen stones across all five domains," Dante said slowly. "More than we've lost in the past century."
The math was damning. Even for immortal beings accustomed to thinking in epochs, eighteen failures in one week represented a crisis.
"Any common elements among the failed stones?" he asked.
"Age," Caelum replied. "The oldest stones seem most vulnerable, though I can't be certain that's significant."
"Location patterns?"
"None that I can determine," Seraphina said with frustration. "Border stones, internal stones, high-traffic areas, isolated locations. No consistency."
"Which suggests either random decay," Thessa observed softly, "or forces affecting the ward system that we don't yet understand."
His gaze swept the assembled Death Lords. Caelum appeared genuinely concerned that his domain had been hit the hardest. Seraphina radiated frustration at a problem she couldn't solve with violence. Vex seemed more interested in the theater than in the crisis itself. Thessa watched everything with that unnerving stare.
And six feet to his right, the thief stood still, her expression neutral. But he caught the slight tension in her shoulders, the way her gaze moved from speaker to speaker.
