Dorian looked at him.
Just that. Looked at him.
Seconds passed.
One.
Two.
Three.
Kael held his gaze at first. His crooked smile still there, still challenging. His dark eyes trying to find something in Dorian's: a spark, a reaction, a crack in that wall of indifference.
Four.
Five.
Six.
But there was nothing.
Dorian's green eyes were like frozen emeralds. Neither cold nor warm. Simply... present. As if he were looking through Kael, as if the messy-haired boy were nothing more than a piece of furniture in the room.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
Kael felt something strange. It wasn't fear. It wasn't discomfort. It was something harder to identify: the sensation of being irrelevant. Of knowing that, to Dorian, he simply didn't matter enough to deserve a response.
Ten.
Kael looked away.
It wasn't a sharp movement. It wasn't a humiliating retreat. But it was a retreat. His smile tightened, lost its edge. His words, when they came, sounded forced.
"Alright," he said, trying to inject nonchalance into his voice. "Quiet one, aren't you?"
"Maybe he's deciding if you're worth wasting words on," Hugo suggested.
His tone was mocking, but his eyes—those quick eyes that had scanned the room upon entering—observed Dorian with new interest. As if he'd just recalibrated his initial assessment.
"Maybe you should shut up too," Kael replied.
But there was no real aggression in his words. It was the ritual of two people who knew each other too well and had developed their own language of insults as a form of communication. Nothing more.
Nayu spoke for the first time since sitting down.
"The Council reports," she said.
Her voice was clear. Precise. Every word measured, as if she'd calculated the exact weight each should carry. Her gloved fingers stopped tapping on the table.
"Indicate this mission requires coordination. That implies communication. If you can't offer that, perhaps you should request replacements now and save us the trouble later."
A silence followed.
Not an awkward silence. It was the silence of people processing an unexpected blow. Of people unaccustomed to having someone speak to them with such frankness.
Kael looked at her. His expression shifted. The forced smile disappeared, replaced by something closer to grudging respect.
"Tch," he hissed through his teeth, but didn't respond.
Hugo raised an eyebrow. His eyes evaluated Nayu with new interest, as if mentally cataloging her into a different category.
Dorian, for his part, didn't react. He simply observed. As always.
And then the door opened.
Not with a hiss. Not with a mechanical announcement.
It swung wide open, as if someone had decided subtleties were unnecessary.
A figure entered.
He was a man. Not young, but not old either. On Helion, age was a diffuse concept; advanced metabolism and Helion energy could prolong youth decades beyond normal. But there was something about him that suggested experience. Years. Cycles of missions and battles that had left their mark not in wrinkles, but in the way he moved, the way he occupied space.
His hair was completely white. Not gray, but white, as if he'd been born with that color or as if years of Helion energy exposure had bleached every strand. Cut with military precision: not a millimeter out of place. His beard, neat and short, framed a face with firm lines that betrayed no emotion.
But it was his eyes that truly mattered.
Gray. Molten steel color. They swept the room with the efficiency of a military scanner in fractions of a second. Every corner. Every person. Every potential threat. Nothing escaped that sweep.
He wore the Council of Exploration's dress uniform. Dark blue, almost black, with silver details that glowed faintly under the room's lights. Multiple decorations lined his chest—mission medals, rank insignia, recognitions spanning decades of service—but it wasn't the decorations that drew attention.
It was his presence.
When he entered, the air in the room changed.
It grew denser. More serious. As if gravity had slightly increased, as if every oxygen molecule weighed a little more.
The young people reacted instinctively.
Kael pulled his legs off the table with a speed bordering on comical. His boots hit the floor with a sharp thud, and his back, which had been relaxed until then, straightened as if a steel cable had yanked it upward.
Hugo, who'd been leaning back in his chair with studied casualness, sat upright. His shoulders tensed. His eyes, always alert, focused exclusively on the newcomer.
Nayu didn't change her posture. She was already sitting correctly, already had her back straight, already in an alert position. But her fingers stopped tapping entirely, and her jaw tightened imperceptibly.
Dorian didn't move.
But his eyes—those green eyes that had unsettled Kael—fixed on the man with new intensity. It wasn't fear. It wasn't automatic respect. It was pure evaluation. The same type of scrutiny the man was applying to the room, applied back.
The man stopped in the center of the room.
Right where everyone could see him. Right where everyone knew he was the center of attention without needing to say it.
He didn't smile. Didn't frown. His expression was neutral, but there was something about it that suggested that neutrality was a deliberate choice, not a limitation. He could have shown any emotion; he simply chose not to.
"Welcome, young explorers," he said.
His voice wasn't particularly strong. It didn't need to be. It filled the room on its own, by the authority it carried implicitly. Each word fell like a stone in still water, creating ripples that expanded to the farthest corners.
"I am Commander Voss."
Just that. Name and rank. No "pleased to meet you." No "nice to know you." There was no courtesy in his words, only fact.
He paused.
His gray eyes swept each face. Stopping a second on each. Evaluating. Classifying. Storing.
"I've read your files," he continued. "All of you have exceptional abilities. All of you have demonstrated competence in your respective fields. All of you have survived solo missions that would have killed explorers twice your experience."
Another pause.
Longer.
"That means nothing here."
Kael opened his mouth.
Voss silenced him with a look before he could make a single sound.
Kael closed his mouth.
"On Veridia," Voss continued, as if the interruption had never happened, "you will not be exceptional individuals. You will be a team. And a team functions as a single organism, or it doesn't function at all."
He began to walk.
Slowly. Circling the table. Passing behind each chair. His boots made no sound on the floor, but every step felt like a small tremor.
"An organism cannot afford one of its limbs deciding to act independently. An organism cannot afford its organs competing with each other. An organism—" his voice dropped slightly "—cannot afford members who prioritize their individual survival over the good of the whole."
Behind Hugo. Behind Kael. Behind Nayu.
"In the coming days, you will be evaluated. Not just in combat. Not just in technical skills. You will be evaluated on your ability to trust. To communicate. To sacrifice your own glory for the group's success."
He stopped.
Right behind Dorian.
"Those who cannot do that," his voice grew colder, "will not survive in this world."
Dorian felt the weight of that presence at his back.
He didn't turn. Didn't react. But every muscle in his body was alert. Every fiber of his being processed that man's proximity, the energy emanating from him, the potential threat he represented. His mental map—that extension of his Helion that was always active—tried to probe the Commander, measure his energy level, anticipate his movements.
And it failed.
It was like trying to measure the ocean's depth with a ruler. Like trying to hear the sound of a void. Voss's energy was there, definitely present, but it was so vast, so deep, that Dorian's sensors couldn't process it. They could only register its existence without being able to quantify it.
Voss leaned slightly.
His voice dropped to barely a whisper. A whisper meant only for Dorian.
"Especially those who think they can do it alone."
Dorian didn't blink.
Didn't swallow.
Gave no sign of having heard.
But he heard.
And in his mind, Omega's voice resonated with unusual urgency.
"Sir, that man is incredibly dangerous. My sensors cannot penetrate his natural defense. His Helion energy level is... I cannot measure it. It's like trying to measure a sun."