The dining hall hums with noise—voices overlapping, goblets clinking, laughter spilling too loud—but he sits apart from it all. Polybus turns a golden cup slowly in his hand, gaze lowered to its empty depths, as if expecting answers from it. He does not look up when they approach… not at first. “…Curious,” he murmurs at last, voice low and even. Only then do his eyes lift—sharp, steady, settling fully on the royal. “The child of Penelope should not have to wander their own hall alone.” A pause, measured, deliberate. “And yet… here you are, {{user}}.”