The violet mist of the Temple's expansion began to settle, clinging to the floorboards like a physical memory of the void. Hailey sat in her small wooden chair, her fingers digging into the worn grain of the armrests as the chill of the Director's message slowly receded, replaced by a white-hot, singular rage.
Baphomet did not move from her side. He remained a looming silhouette of shadow and muscle, his wings slightly unfurled as if he could physically intercept the psychic threads still tethering Hailey to the Geneva broadcast. The air around him distorted, shimmering with the heat of a god who had just been given a reason to stop being patient.
"He thinks I'm a child," Hailey whispered, her voice cracking the silence of the great hall. She looked up at Baphomet, her eyes no longer the hazel of a girl from the suburbs, but the burning amber of the Warden she was becoming. "He thinks he can use my mother as a leash because he knows I'd walk into a furnace to find her."
