Triumphal Ceremony (II)

Jago Sevatarion examined the face of the man before him with a detached calm.

Without question, the first thing anyone would notice was his complexion.

No slave imprisoned in a sunless dungeon for his entire life could ever have possessed such a color. He was pale as ash after a fire had burned out, perhaps even paler than the dead.

Then there were his eyes. In Sevatar's memory, they had always been veiled by a pitch-black curtain, like two murky black mirrors. When you looked into them, all you could see was your own reflection.

But that was merely his gaze when he felt nothing. If there was thought in his heart, those mirrors instantly became a pair of blades that pierced the heart and cut to the bone. Every second spent standing before him meant enduring that terrible torment.

You would be driven by instinct to feel fear, and from that fear would arise the urge to flee or fall to your knees and beg for mercy—unless your conscience was clear.

Sevatar closed his eyes.

Cheerful music continued to flow from both sides of the viewing box. The triumphal ceremony in the center of the square had entered an entirely new stage. Soon, warships and shuttles would descend, and the noise would be a million times greater than it was now.

"Jago?"

The man called to him by a rarely used name. In this day and age, almost no one called him that anymore. He was addressed as my lord, hero, Chapter Master; even those who called him directly by his name, "Sevatar," had become few.

They all knew his story: ten thousand years of perseverance, endless legends. They called him with reverence, looked up at him, and condensed that reverence into caution and cumbersome etiquette.

As though he