Chapter 79
The courtyard of the Ancestor was old.
Stone worn smooth by centuries of footsteps. White lions lined the path—frozen mid-roar, their marble manes catching the afternoon light like snow on a mountaintop, at their center, ten elders sat in a crescent of carved obsidian.
And before them, Dax sat alone.
He had chosen a simple wooden chair—unadorned, unremarkable, placed deliberately. Behind him, Madeka stood to his right, her dark hair spilling like oil over the crimson gems at her throat. Nadia stood to his left, golden eyes fixed forward, her posture carrying the stillness of a blade waiting to be drawn.
The elders watched as Dax watched them back with cold eyes.
His eyes had changed. Not in color—they remained that deep, endless red—but in depth. The Origin Eyes saw through flesh and bone, through aura and facade, down to the screaming truth of what laid beneath.
