The capital was silent, but the silence did not feel peaceful.
The Blood Council tower stood at the center of the city like a dark spine piercing the night sky. Torches burned along the outer walls, and rows of guards stood watch with spears and curved blades. From the outside everything looked normal.
Inside the tower, something had changed.
Far beneath the council halls, deeper than the prison levels and older than the archives, there was a chamber carved into black stone.
Few people in the kingdom knew that it existed.
Fewer still had ever entered it.
Tonight the chamber was open.
Seven elders stood around a circular platform carved with ancient markings. The stone floor was filled with symbols that no longer appeared in modern blood magic. They were older. Rougher. The kind of runes scholars argued about in forgotten books.
The air in the chamber was cold.
Not the natural cold of stone.
A heavier cold.
The kind that crept under the skin.
