The court session

We entered a hall that resembled a stage of a round parliament. There were audience seats rising high all around us, with a special lodge right in the middle. There were about a hundred seats and no empty ones. Those in the audience wore black togas, with the exception of those in the lodge, who wore togas in a bloody-red color. There were five dressed in red, and they seemed to be some kind of special group of judges, while the rest must have been the court representatives.

No one in the audience was staring at me as intently as the one judge seated in the lodge's main seat. It was a woman, a beautiful woman with blonde, almost white hair and crystal cold eyes. She seemed extremely fierce. Her intimidating gaze made me flinch the second our eyes met. Strangely, at the same time, I didn't feel hostility coming from her. What I saw in her eyes could be described as a peculiar kind of curiosity. At one moment, she smirked at me. I gasped, feeling slightly awkward, then I looke