~Third Person POV~

The archive room felt smaller with all of them in it.

It was not a large space under ordinary circumstances — shelves on three walls, a central table worn smooth by decades of use, two narrow windows that let in light with the reluctant economy of windows that had been built for ventilation rather than illumination. When the full elder council occupied it, the room acquired a density that had nothing to do with physical crowding and everything to do with the weight of ...