The day was going to be busy, and Phei knew it in that loose, peripheral way one senses an oncoming siege long before the first battering ram kisses the gate — not yet screaming in his face, but squatting heavy at the edge of awareness, ready to announce itself the instant he dared look away.
A long, merciless list of obligations stretched before him: meetings that could not be delegated, appearances that demanded the precise calibration of his devastatingly perfect face, decisions whose weight could topple minor empires if mishandled.
The slow, grinding resumption of ordinary life after a night in which he had casually enslaved an Original Vampire Progenitor and been gifted an entirely new power tier by a system that had been hoarding its tribute like a miserly dragon for decades.
