Chapter 46. The Choice of Blood

When the first hint of dawn brushed against the horizon, the sky remained a vast, unbroken expanse of inky black, as if some silent pact had been made between earth and cosmos to keep the light at bay. There were no stars twinkling above, no pale moon reclining high in the firmament—only a heavy, velvet darkness that felt almost tangible to the skin.

It was the sort of dawn one might imagine in a storybook, found only in half-remembered dreams, where night refuses to yield even the smallest thread of hope. And yet, on the open plateau known as the Judicium, that heavy silence was exactly the setting demanded by an ancient, almost hungry ritual.

High on the mountainside, the Council’s ring had assembled in the cold predawn air. Travelers who arrived early might have thought themselves the first witnesses to a storm, but storms announce themselves with thunder. Here, there was nothing but the steady breath of wind across weathered stone and the muted tension of a gatherin