Chapter 207: The Quiet Room
The chamber sat four floors beneath the World Tree.
It had no designation on any Vanguard schematic. Helion's engineers had carved it out decades ago as a cold storage vault, and nobody had ever bothered to fill it.
Bare granite walls. A single hanging lamp. One iron chair bolted to the floor.
Water dripped somewhere behind the stone.
DRIP.
Envoy Thalis Corwyn sat in the chair with his wrists bound to the armrests by kinetic pressure alone. There were no ropes. There was no metal. His arms simply refused to move.
Feeling returned to his body in slow, agonizing stages. His fingertips first. Then his forearms. The residual voltage from Lucien's strike still crawled through his nerves like insects under the skin.
His white and gold robes were caked in Sector Four mud.
Draven stepped into the light.
He set two objects on the floor where the Envoy could see them. The heavy velvet pouch of gold. The smooth black comm-crystal.
