Hours had passed since David began his grand briefing in the De Gor Mansion's meeting room, each minute heavy with revelations that slowly, steadily, dismantled the established certainties of his Shadows.
The initial tension had given way to a stunned, almost suffocating silence as David finished laying bare the terrifying truths of their immediate adversary.
The air, once crackling with strategic anticipation, now hummed with a different kind of energy: the cold, unyielding weight of impossible odds. Even the ambient hum of the ancient wards, woven into the very fabric of the mansion, seemed to falter, straining under the sheer magnitude of the information David had casually presented.
The Mistress of the Whispering Creed was, indeed, a witch. That much they had deduced through painstaking speculation and dangerous reconnaissance.
