For several breaths, the Lord could not form a single word, and Danton was clever enough to leave the silence untouched.
The crystalline pendant remained caught between Danton's fingers beneath the warm radiance filling the private hall, beautiful enough to have passed for an expensive ornament if not for the faint residue clinging to it.
That residue itself was pitifully small compared to the power that must once have touched the object, little more than a spiritual stain left behind after something incomparably greater had already departed, yet even that fragment had forced the Lord's six wings to spread instinctively.
The golden-white light had drained from the avatar's several feathers, the Essence composing his avatar recoiling as though it remembered some ancient lesson his mind had not yet finished understanding.
Thin golden lines crawled through the stone, ancient protections responding to a threat that was not even truly present.
