Refusing to flinch at the insult, I haul the next page over, the vellum slapping brutally against the timber.
"Forty harvests ago." I refuse to surrender an inch of the floor. "Lord Kryven’s predecessor raised a mercenary army to challenge the Thosti borders. Within a month, the human laborers in the outer rings began dropping from a mysterious sickness. The resulting desperation fueled a massive spike in the flesh-markets. Children were sold to the Dark Market brokers by the thousands."
Tilting my chin upward, I anchor my undeniable defiance against the stunned countenances of the neutral nobles.
"Those brokers were secretly funded by Patriarch Varynth." My volume drops into a harsh, cutting clarity that ensures every word strikes like a blade. "He purchased the stolen children, traded them to the far continents, and used the wealth to crush the rival army. He engineered the misery of the surface to manipulate the economy of the Undercity. He has been pulling the strings of your trade for centuries."
"Lies!" Varynth's magic lashes out wildly, shattering a floating alchemy sphere near the vaulted ceiling. Red glass rains down upon the empty benches. "The scribes will verify! The seals are false!"
"Then let the scribes verify." A sharp, sardonic edge cuts perfectly through the chaos.
Descending the obsidian steps of the western tier, Lady Nyxira Velmorne’s striking silver hair catches the dim light.The high-ranking neutral noble bypasses permission entirely, crossing the floor to halt directly at the presentation table. Extracting a small, silver monocle from the folds of her cloak, she lifts it to her plum-colored eye. The monocle is a truth-glass, an ancient, enchanted lens used by the high merchants to detect magical forgery and falsified ink.
The entire Tribunal chamber holds its collective breath.
Leaning over the thick, iron-clasped tome, Nyxira traces the faded Khuzuth sigils. The monocle uncovers the shadow-transfers, the grain withdrawals, and finally, the sprawling, looping signature at the bottom of the page.
For a long, agonizing moment, the neutral noble holds the chamber in deafening silence. Lowering the silver lens, her expression twists from arrogant amusement into a mask of pure, unvarnished revulsion. Pivoting away from the ledger, she angles her chin toward the highest seat in the amphitheater.
"The ink is ancient. The seals are unbroken." The death knell of Nyxira's confirmation rings out in the quiet hall. Pinning the neutral houses with certainty, she drives the final nail. "The mortal speaks the truth. Varynth’s seal is authentic. He has been bleeding our fleets and slaughtering the surface to pad his own rotting vaults."
The silence shatters entirely.
The neutral houses erupt in a deafening, unified roar of outrage. The Khuzuth lords do not care about the human lives lost in the foundries, but they care deeply about the coin stolen from their own estates. To learn that the devastating famines that bankrupted their houses were not acts of nature, but the deliberate, calculated treason of the Thosti Patriarch, pushes the assembly past the point of return.
"Treason!" Drawing a ceremonial dagger, Lord Vane slams the hilt against the stone railing. "He starved our people! He stole our wealth!"
"Drag him from the throne!" A secondary demand tears from the unaligned benches.
The sovereign guards, already rigid from the arrest of Lord Kryven, tighten their grips on their polearms, entirely unsure of who to defend. The authority of the High Council collapses in real time.
Standing upon his dais, the furious sea of Khuzuth nobility turns against Varynth. His skeletal face drains of color, lips pulling back into a desperate, cornered snarl. Throwing his hands upward, he attempts to summon the full, devastating force of his foul magic to silence the room.
He does not get the chance.
Zhetrin moves.
The apex predator glides past me, his towering, massive frame completely eclipsing the presentation table. Refusing to shout over the chaos, he simply unleashes the catastrophic force of his magic.
A catastrophic wave of pure energy erupts from his iron-shod boots, a violent shockwave of raw power that ripples straight up the obsidian steps. The sheer, concussive force shatters the remaining alchemy spheres into crimson dust, plunging the lower tiers into darkness. The leaden, crushing pressure forces the shouting nobles back into their seats, physically silencing the chamber.
Claiming the middle of the frozen floor, Zhetrin's violet-ringed irises pin the rotting Patriarch of his bloodline.
"The ledgers are open, Varynth." The baritone vibrates straight through the very foundation of the Tribunal hall.
Anchored completely to the Warlord's back, the deep indigo silk of my gown flutters in the freezing wind generated by his power. We did not come here merely to survive the vote. We came to tear the crown from the butcher’s head.
26
ZHETRIN
The freezing silence of the Tribunal chamber becomes a physical, crushing mass pressing down upon the hundreds of Khuzuth nobles trapped within my magic.
Commanding the frosted obsidian floor, my towering frame remains rigid, pinning the skeletal figure at the highest point of the amphitheater. The mask of the benevolent, ancient Patriarch shatters completely, exposing only the feral, cornered beast beneath.
"You fools!" Gripping the stone balustrade, Varynth's voice cracks wildly. The foul, rotting-earth stench of his magic surges, attempting to push back against my freezing pressure. "You look at these ledgers and see theft? I gave you the Undercity! I built the very architecture of your wealth!"
Sweeping his pristine white robes, the Patriarch gestures violently toward the neutral houses.
