Gregory’s fingers curled around the leaden metal box.
The latch clicked open—a sharp, crisp sound that sliced clean through the tribunal’s suffocating silence, loud enough to reverberate off every stone wall, every ancient trophy, every fur-draped throne. It was not just a sound. It was a starting gun. A trap snapping shut.
My breath caught tight in my throat, locked mid-chest, no longer willing to rise.
The lid lifted slow and deliberate.
Nestled on worn black velvet lay a stone unlike any earthly mineral I had ever studied. It was alive—undeniably, violently alive. Palm-sized, bruised indigo-purple, the color of a storm-choked twilight hour right before lightning tears the sky open. Deep within its core, currents of silver and gold swirled in slow, endless orbit. Not reflections. Not
