Location:Zhū'kethara — Hall of Traitors
Date/Time:Mid Cinderfall, 9939 AZI — Morning
Realm:Demon Realm
The Hall of Traitors was cold.
Not the living cold of Cinderfall's autumn. Not the formation-generated cold of preservation wards. This was the accumulated cold of absence — the temperature that settled into a space when warmth had been deliberately and permanently removed, when the dead were kept not out of love but out of the particular demon conviction that even enemies deserved a resting place where their bodies would not be forgotten. The air tasted of stone and dust and the faint, acrid chemical undertone of compounds that had kept organic tissue intact across centuries that shouldn't have been kind enough to leave anything to keep.
