[ Unknown Location - At Least 500 Feet Underground ]
The chamber was a vault deep underground—its architecture more ancient than any recorded civilization. Unknown black stone material arched high overhead, meeting in a circular oculus where no natural sky shone, only a thin lattice of floating glyphs orbiting a silent void.
Along the perimeter, crystalline conduits hummed with a slow, foreboding rhythm, casting ghostly reflections across the obsidian floor. At the center: a monolithic table formed from a single slab of onyx, polished to a mirror sheen, upon which flickered holographic sigils in dialects long erased from human knowledge.
Around this black altar sat twelve figures in high-backed chairs made of carbon-forged alloy, each embossed with an insignia denoting power: a crest of banking dynasties, military orders, corporate hegemonies, bloodlines traced to Babylonian priest-kings and the Vatican.
