Chapter 56. The Hunt Reversed

The summons arrived before sunrise.

Adria hadn’t slept. Her room in the west tower of the Archive felt wrong without sound—too quiet since Royce’s absence. The silence wasn’t peaceful. It was accusatory, stretching itself into the folds of the room, crowding the corners, whispering: ‘You waited too long.’

The message had been slipped under her door. A folded piece of stiff parchment, sealed with the wax emblem of the Red House: the twin serpents coiled around an arrowhead. Crimson wax, still warm to the touch.

The note contained only a single sentence:

You are requested for observation and counsel. Come with grace.—L. Sayris.

Grace. As if that was ever an option.

She dressed slowly—deliberately—in her gray Archive robes. They’d always been a symbol of neutrality, of intellectual devotion over politics. Today, they felt like armor that wouldn’t hold.

By the time she stepped into the morning light, two figures were waiting at the