His gaze swept over the serpent-bone chair in the command center, over the modern projection equipment disguised as old sand tables, over the silver sealing patterns lining the edges of the archive shelves filled with forbidden texts, before finally settling on Madara's face.
Madara stood about two steps behind the main seat.
He wore a dark gray robe close in color to the stone walls of the Chamber of Secrets, without a hood. Under the Chamber's constant bluish-white light, his face looked almost unnaturally still and smooth.
"This place will become a foothold for the Shadow Society to cultivate new blood. Hogwarts graduates one hundred to one hundred twenty students every year. The most promising among them..." He tilted his head slightly, his gaze turning toward the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.
"...will gradually be brought into this space. They will first be invited into the model area of the Elite Society to take part in those legal, public academic discussions and training activities. Then..." He paused. There was no hesitation in that pause; it was more like an arrangement to let his next sentence stand alone for a moment. "...at the appropriate stage, they will be guided into deeper levels."
Draco and Daphne dropped to one knee in salute, rising only after Madara waved for them to do so. Draco turned to look at Madara. The usual sharpness openly displayed in his eyes had been pressed down, revealing something harder beneath it. "Lord Madara, the first list of candidates..." he said. "We're already compiling it."
"No hurry," Madara said. "Start pushing it forward this summer. The direction remains unchanged." He turned and walked several steps toward the depths of the Chamber of Secrets. As the hem of his robe brushed the Mithril inlay along the base of the