POV: Aphrodite
This is where Alphas are made. Or broken.
The prison corridor is narrower than the throne room and the sound of the court collapsing above and behind us is different down here — muffled, filtered through stone and ancient architecture, but present in the way that distant thunder is present, felt in the chest more than heard with the ears. The ley-lines running through the corridor walls are doing something I haven't felt from them before. They're warm. Not the ambient temperature of old stone but actively warm, the specific heat of something that has been running sealed magic for centuries and is finally, for the first time, running it in both directions.
