He shifts his weight, dragging a hand over his mouth. Then, he claps. Once, loudly and enthusiastically.
“This is not exactly what I had in mind for brask and banter, but I did enjoy the show,” he quips. He wants to go to her. To put the broken pieces back together. But not here. Not in front of everyone. She’d have his balls for something so sentimental. So he moves to redirect the conversation, but Elyssara steps forward first.
“Enough.”
She doesn’t raise her voice. Doesn’t need to. The word lands clean, immovable. The room stills. Her gaze moves across them—slow, deliberate.
“You’re all standing here arguing about pride,” she says evenly. “About history. About who wronged who.”
Her lip curls, emerald-green eyes narrowing on the room.
“While the world breaks.”
No one interrupts. Not now.
“It is what humans do,” she continues, quieter now, sharper. “When the pain of existence becomes so great that it calcifies into identity… and that identity requires an enemy.”
That lands.
Ronyn feels it move through the room.
Through Marin.
Through Vren.
Through Jax.
Through all of them.
Elyssara doesn’t soften.
“Would you all rather turn your pain on each other? Or on the ones who wish to claim these realms for dominion?” She asks, though she does not wait for an answer. “I am not asking you not to hurt. I am asking you to direct it effectively.” Her words are cold now, callous.
“If you need to hate each other,” she says, “do it later.”
A beat.
“Because right now, we need it pointed in the right direction.”
Her eyes flick briefly—Marin. Jax. The rest.
“Hatred doesn’t need to call itself hatred to destroy everything in its path.”
Calira’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. Like some part of the words landed somewhere she does not know what to do with.
Silence. Heavy. Unavoidable. She exhales slowly.
“Redirect it,” she says. “Or don’t.”
Her shoulders square.
“But understand this—what comes next will exploit every weakness we have. I’d rather our weaknesses not be petty grievances and political dick measuring.”
A pause.
“It will only care what you choose to do with all that pain.”
The room holds that. No one moves. No one speaks. And then—Marin steps forward. Measured. Controlled.
