Chapter 40 The New Council

• The old council chamber had been gutted during the siege. Broken chairs, charred walls, and a collapsed roof had left it useless as a gathering place. But Ivy insisted they rebuild it—not as it was, but as it needed to be.
• So they began from the ground up.
• Where once there had been stone walls, now there were tall windows that let in the light. The heavy doors were replaced with arching beams carved with pack sigils. The council table, formerly a long imposing slab of black oak, had been remade as a wide circle—so no one could sit at the head.