The silence that saturated The Void Chamber after the physical interrogation ended felt far more oppressive than the searing lashes of light themselves. Dayat remained bound to the root-woven chair, his breathing heavy and smelling of iron—the unmistakable scent of internal bleeding. Before him, Kancil remained unconscious, his small frame looking fragile and broken under the dim, flickering glow of the purple crystals. Veynar, the High Warden, stood motionless, clutching the Root-Singer's Baton, which still hummed with a faint, malevolent green light.
"You think us monsters, do you not?" Veynar's voice shattered the stillness, smooth and laced with the poison of absolute conviction. "You believe us cruel for punishing you, the 'well-intentioned' outsider. But you do not know, Dayat. You have no inkling of what your 'master' did to this land in the forgotten ages."
