Chapter 56. The Reckoning (2)

Harper didn’t pick up the ribbon.

She tied it to the vault handle instead—black silk, silver thread, quiet as breath.

Not as a keepsake.

Not as surrender.

As declaration.

A warning dressed as grace.

It dangled in the dark like a held breath, a reminder to anyone who passed: something sacred had been broken—and something far more dangerous had been made in its place.

Then she walked.

Her steps echoed through the West Corridor, past the Founder’s Gallery where portraits of long-dead men gazed down from their oil-and-gold prisons—gods carved in pigment, too proud to blink. Harper didn’t avert her eyes. She stared them down like they owed her something. Because they did.

They had built this empire on obedience, omission, and generational leverage. They believed in continuity over correction. They believed power was safest when inherited—not earned.

She was going to rewrite that, thread by thread.

And she wasn’t asking for