SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Chapter 463: Chapter 463: A New Seat Among the Eight [V]

Zafira and Trafalgar returned to the main hall a moment later. The moment he stepped back inside, the noise of the gathering swallowed him again. Voices, music, laughter held behind fake smiles, the clinking of glasses, the slow movement of servants carrying trays through the crowd.

Trafalgar’s eyes moved through the people in front of him immediately, then past them, searching.

She was gone.

He looked toward one side of the hall, then another. Toward the far corridors. Toward the groups gathered beneath the chandeliers. The woman he had just seen in the passage was nowhere to be found, as if the crowd had swallowed her whole the instant he looked away.

Zafira noticed quickly enough. ”Are you looking for someone?”

”Yes. I think I saw someone I knew.” His eyes narrowed slightly. ”But I can’t see her now.”

Zafira studied him for a brief moment, but before she could ask anything else, it happened again. People started approaching. A noblewoman from some wealthy house. Two young heirs with carefully smiles. A merchant lord from a banner Trafalgar did not even recognize at a glance. Then another. And another. The moment they noticed he had returned, they began drifting back toward him with the same thinly hidden interest as before.

One of them opened his mouth to speak, and another was already waiting half a step behind him.

Trafalgar looked past them once more, trying to catch even a glimpse of the woman from the corridor, but now there were too many bodies, too many banners, too many polished faces crowding his sight.

’Shit.’

At this rate there was no way he would find her again. Not while the entire hall seemed determined to keep circling back to him every time he stopped moving.

’At this pace, I won’t see her again.’

Far from the noise of the banquet hall, beyond thick corridors and doors meant to keep sound in this place, the true Council gathered in a separate chamber.

The room was circular and closed, built from dark stone polished to such a degree that the low mana-lights along the walls reflected across it in muted lines. At the center rested a great obsidian table, wide and heavy, with eight seats placed evenly around it. In front of each seat, a narrow slot had been carved into the stone, sized precisely for the metal tokens carried by the heads of the Great Families.

One by one, they took their places.

Roderic au Vaelion sat with the same easy nobility he always seemed to carry, golden hair brushed back neatly, one hand still turning a glass of wine as though this were merely another evening gathering. Nothing in his posture looked tense, yet the calm in him felt measured rather than careless.

Lady Nyssara di Myrrhvale placed her token in silence. Sea-colored robes flowed neatly around her as she sat, the faint movement of gills at her neck barely visible beneath her high collar. There was something cold and fluid about her presence, as if every word she might speak had already been weighed and smoothed long before leaving her lips.

Malakar du Zar’khael followed, tall and unnervingly composed, pale grey skin marked faintly beneath the base of his curved black horns. His dark crimson eyes remained unreadable as he took his seat, fingers resting near the edge of the table with a stillness that felt more dangerous than movement ever could.

Lysaria au Nocthar lowered herself into her chair with elegant ease, white hair catching the chamber’s light like moonlit silver. A faint smile rested at her lips, not warm, not kind, but amused in a distant way, as though she already expected this room to fracture and had come prepared to enjoy it.

Grumhald au Dvergar sat with far less grace and far more weight. Broad, compact, runes faintly glowing across pieces of armor worked even into his formal attire, he crossed his arms as if the room itself had already begun irritating him. Even his silence looked aggressive.

Elenara au Sylvanel took her place with natural control, green eyes clear and deep beneath the chamber’s low light. Her staff rested beside her seat, living vines curled loosely around the lower part of it, as if even here, in a room of stone and politics, nature refused to be entirely absent from her side.

Valttair du Morgain sat straight as ever. His token slid into place beneath the symbol of two crossed swords under a wolf’s eye, and once it was done, he simply waited.

Then the final seat was claimed.

Where Kaedor had once sat, Darian du Thal’zar now took his place. He was the youngest among them, and that fact could be felt the moment one looked his way, but there was no hesitation in his posture. His back stayed straight. He did not avoid a single gaze. The striped tiger ears marked his bloodline clearly, and the tail behind him betrayed more than the rest of him did, shifting once before stilling again.

Whatever else he might have been before, here he no longer sat as an heir. He sat as the head of House Thal’zar.

For a few seconds after the last token settled into place, the chamber remained silent.

Then Grumhald broke it. ”Oh?” The dwarf leaned back slightly in his seat, eyes landing on Darian. ”A new and prettier face joins us today. Shame about your father, boy. Seems Elenara wasn’t feeling merciful.”

The words landed heavily in the room, blunt in the way only Grumhald ever seemed to manage.

Elenara’s green eyes shifted toward him at once. ”I recommend that you stay quiet, Grumhald.” Her voice was calm, but there was enough force in it to cool the air around the table. ”The war is over. This meeting exists to conclude it officially, not to reopen it for your amusement.”

Darian did not react immediately. He held his posture, then spoke with a steadiness that fit the seat better than some of them might have expected. ”My father paid for the crimes he committed. That matter has already been resolved.” His gaze moved across the table without lowering itself once. ”I would prefer we do not drag those moments into the present. It would be better to look ahead.”

Roderic let out a faint sound that was almost a laugh, still slowly turning the wine in his glass. ”Oh, you have a good tongue. I like that.” His eyes stayed on Darian with open amusement. ”Perhaps we will not miss your father quite as much as expected.”

No one answered that.

Before the silence could shift again, the great doors at the far end of the chamber opened. Ten figures entered in ordered silence, dressed in dark robes edged with silver runes that caught the low light as they walked. They were the Elders of the Council of Sages. Not the true power in the room, and everyone present knew it, but they carried something the Eight did not. The authority of ritual. Of precedent. Of record. Their presence did not press on the chamber through force. It settled over it like law.

At their head walked a young-looking elven woman. She stepped forward, her gaze moving once across the table before she spoke.

”Please. Order in the chamber.”

The little tension still hanging in the room drew tight and still.

”We will now begin the One Hundred Forty-Fourth Council.” Her voice remained clear and controlled. ”There are several matters to discuss. The war. Its consequences. The Void Creatures.” She paused briefly. ”And a new anomaly.”

With that, the Council finally began.