The council table held eleven seats, though on most days only ten of them were filled. Today was not most days.
Alex was present, and even surrounded by ten individuals who together held the highest authority the Human Continent had to offer, every face at the table wore the same grim expression, because his presence, more than anything else that might have been said, meant they were facing a crisis of real scale.
Alex looked around the long ivory table, familiar faces and newer ones alike looking back at him, all of them carrying some blend of the same emotions.
Relief, that he had come at all. Fear, at what his coming implied. And beneath both, a thin thread of confusion, the kind that came from knowing something significant was taking place and not yet knowing its shape.
