Punishment Room: 10. The Tribunal

The summons arrived in person.

Cassandra found me as I stood in the doorway of my apartment, one hand on the knob and the other pressed flat against the envelope. She looked different—no longer only the smiling guide in crimson, but precise, composed, a woman who wore authority like armor. Her mask hung from one gloved finger as if to remind me the club’s face could be removed and still cut.

“Tonight,” she said, no flourish, “is the Tribunal.”

I felt the word as a physical thing. The Echelon’s Tribunal was less ceremony and more law: a council of elders, the custodians of their rites. When they called a Tribunal, it meant consequence followed revelation. I thought of Corin’s warning—of how the Order did not like what we had made of us—and my stomach flipped with the mixture of dread and fierce pride that had come to define me.

“We go together,” she added, voice softer. “You do not go alone.”

The chamber was cavernous beneath the chandelier, draped in heavy vel