Hajin resumed the host feed and both recovery flows as the recorders opened their evidence register beside Didi's occupied chair. Its matching seat held an absence notice, while Ferra kept the cradle behind the boundary near his wrapped right forearm.
Juna waited with the excavation account, nose twitching, while Eirwen kept her sealed case inside the diplomatic alcove.
'An empty chair and a scrap of paper, what a brave fucking showing from the First Prince's people.'
Three councilors held the succession, archive and household seats, all of them ignoring the vacant chair.
Atheron entered without heralds, twenty Shards briefly manifesting beside his formal mantle in a controlled orbit.
"Record the absence first," he ordered, taking his place above the table, "who submitted that notice, and who examined the patient it describes?"
The household representative rose beside the empty chair, spreading the paper flat beneath its glass weights.
