Chapter 696: The Hall Where War Was Decided

Chapter 695: The Hall Where War Was Decided

The vision shifted.

One moment Sophia was standing in the ritual chamber, watching her mother and Selith discuss blood and beasts and the destruction of everything she had come to love. The next, the stone walls dissolved, the torchlight swallowed itself, and she was somewhere else entirely.

A hall.

Long and cold and carved from pale stone that seemed to drink the light rather than reflect it. High windows lined the walls, their glass dark, showing nothing but the gray wash of an overcast sky. A massive table dominated the center of the room, its surface dark wood scarred by age and perhaps by violence.

Around it sat men and women.

Some wore armor. Others wore fine clothing, the kind that spoke of wealth and status rather than practicality. Their faces were unfamiliar to Sophia, but she recognized the weight in their expressions—the arrogance, the impatience, the barely concealed hunger for something more.

At the head of the table sat Victoria.

She looked as she always did—perfect, composed, beautiful in a way that made Sophia’s stomach turn. Her dark hair fell in smooth waves over her shoulders, and her gown was red in color. Gold bracelets lined her wrists, catching what little light the hall offered.

She was smiling.

That alone made Sophia’s skin crawl.

But there was something else Sophia noticed. If her mother was seated at the head of the table... then perhaps this was the Enclave.

Around the table, the others watched Victoria with a mixture of deference and expectation. They leaned forward in their seats, their hands resting on the table or folded in their laps, waiting for whatever spectacle their Luna had prepared for them.

Sophia stood at the edge of the hall, unseen, untouchable, caught between the world of the vision and the world she had left behind. She could feel the cold stone beneath her feet, but she knew it wasn’t real. She could hear the distant sound of her own breathing, but it felt like it belonged to someone else.

*Remember,* Neoma said quietly. *This has not happened yet.*

Sophia swallowed.

She knew that.

She knew this was a vision—a glimpse of something coming, something her mother was planning. But knowing and feeling were two different things, and right now, standing in this hall surrounded by the people who she was almost certain wanted her pack destroyed, she felt very far from safe.

Victoria lifted her hand.

The room went silent immediately.

"Before we begin," Victoria said, her voice smooth, "I have something to show you."

She reached beneath the table.

And when her hand emerged, it was holding something by the hair.

A head.

Sophia’s breath caught sharply as Victoria tossed it onto the table. It landed with a wet, heavy thud, rolling once before settling near the center, its empty eyes staring upward at nothing.

"The last messenger I sent to the Nightshade Pack," Victoria said calmly, as though she were discussing the weather rather than displaying a severed head. "They sent him back without his body."

A murmur rippled through the hall.

Some of the people present looked horrified. Others looked furious. A few simply stared at the head with cold, calculating expressions, as though they were already weighing how to use this as leverage.

Sophia’s hands curled into fists at her sides.

Victoria was lying.

The Nightshade Pack had not sent any messenger back. There had been no reply at all.

But no one in this hall knew that.

"He was barely recognizable," Victoria continued, her voice hardening slightly. "They wanted us to know exactly who did this. They wanted us to understand that they are not afraid of us."

A man near the middle of the table slammed his fist against the wood.

"Ungrateful bastards!"

A woman nodded sharply beside him. "After everything we did for them. After we allowed them to settle in Nirvana in the first place. This is how they repay us?"

"Allowed them?" another man scoffed. "We gave them that land. We could have let them rot, but we didn’t. And now they spit in our faces."

Voices rose around the table, overlapping, sharp with indignation.

"They have resources we need!"

"The plague is killing our kind while they sit in the North doing nothing!"

"They should be grateful we even acknowledged their existence!"

Sophia listened to them all, her expression carefully blank even though no one could see her. She watched the way their faces twisted with anger, the way they fed off each other’s outrage, building a fire that Victoria had only needed to spark.

*It’s quite disturbing how quick they are to believe her,* Neoma said.

"It really is," Sophia replied to her.

But then she noticed something else.

Victoria was not joining the chorus of outrage.

She sat at the head of the table, her hands folded neatly in front of her, her expression one of patient sorrow. She looked like a leader burdened by difficult decisions, like a woman who had tried peace and been rejected.

It was an act.

Sophia knew it was an act.

But the members did not.

The man who had first spoken raised his voice over the others.

"We have been too lenient with them for too long. They are not allies. They are not even neutral. They are traitors, and traitors do not deserve our mercy."

A woman across the table nodded. "They should be made an example of."

"They should be destroyed," someone else said flatly.

The agreement spread quickly, a wave of consensus that rolled across the table like fire through dry grass.

Victoria waited.

She let them argue, let them build their own justification, let them believe the decision was theirs. And only when the noise began to settle did she finally speak.

"Then it is settled."

Her voice cut through the hall like a blade.

"The Nightshade Pack has made their choice. They have refused to help us. They have refused to cooperate. They have refused to acknowledge the authority of the Enclave."

She paused, letting the weight of her words settle.

"And now, they will face the consequences."

Sophia’s chest tightened.

"We will deal with them," Victoria continued, her voice calm and absolute. "We will destroy the Nightshade Pack, claim their resources, and put an end to their defiance once and for all."

She looked around the table, meeting the eyes of each member in turn.

"And once they are gone, we will finally have what we need to cure the plague."