It was her presence.
The moment her boots stepped onto the wooden planks of the dais, the air in the square thickened. It was not the loud, roaring pressure of a battle-frenzy; it was a vast, subterranean, immovable gravity that pressed down upon the soul of every awakened being present.
Veylara didn't brandish a weapon. She didn't shout. She simply stepped to the edge of the stone platform and took a single, deep breath.
HUMMMMM.
An invisible, crushing dome of pure, unbridled physical density rolled outward from her body like an expanding wall of solid stone.
It washed over the high stairs. It washed over the platform and slammed into the front ranks of the square like a physical gale!
THUD. CLANG. CLATTER.
