Vaelor presented for another two hours.
Aelara sat through all of it. Not passively she tracked every document, every question from the floor, every small shift in the room's attention but her role in that stretch was to be still and present and let the work speak. She had built it to speak without her. That had been the point of the building.
The questions the Council asked were good ones. Not hostile, not performative, the kind of questions that came from people who were genuinely trying to understand something complex and wanted to make sure they understood it correctly before they acted on it.
