Trafalgar's mana bore down on the room like a storm handed weight.
The ward plates along Matteo's walls shrieked beneath the pressure, their runes guttering as cracks crawled across the floor and climbed the lower edge of the reinforced panels. Dust sifted from the ceiling in thin threads. The chamber had been built to contain dangerous conversations - perhaps even a duel between proud old men with too many secrets - but it had never been meant to hold Trafalgar's anger, Caelum's knives, Esmond's tricks, and a homunculus carrying Void-born filth beneath an elven face.
