"The Star Oath still exists?"
The words were spoken to the chamber, to the evidence, to the specific impossibility of what he was seeing. Then he bowed.
Not toward the formation. Toward Liora. The specific bow of someone who has encountered something that exceeds their category of understanding and is responding from a place below that category, from the level where very old things are recognized before they are comprehended.
Far below the Hall of Shadow, in the trial space that the ancient gate had opened into, Kael stood in a world that the first trial's darkness had not prepared him for.
